Page 6426 – Christianity Today (2024)

The conception of history in the Bible can be described as linear, not cyclical. Things come to a conclusion. History does not repeat itself. Here is the difference between the conception of nature, life and history from the immanence point of view and the conception that goes forth from the belief in God and from the revelation of God. From our human point of view within history, we can never transcend our human, i.e., historical limits. No ballistic instrument can bring us beyond the borders of history and time. Therefore the human philosophy of history is always bound to history itself. It seeks the absolute in the relative, eternity in time, God in man. And only in a very modest way can it succeed. Centuries of history are only waves in the sea of eternity, human life is only an infinite little lake of foam in the breaking waves. But all is involved in the eternal motion of going and returning. Nothing seems really to hold its place, nothing comes to a definite end and goal; there is an eternal change, and the change is eternal.

The Biblical Contrast

In the Bible, the conception of history is a different one. The biblical viewpoint is not closed up in history itself but surpasses the waves of time. It sees history and the world in their relation to God. In the Bible, therefore, history has not lost its beginning, nor does it lack its end. The pattern in which the Bible describes history is not that of a circle or circumference without; it is rather that of a path of time which God has made and still is making, from the point when he created the world towards the ends and goals he is leading it.

This conception of the Bible means on the one hand an infinite relativity of world and history. There is not even a spark of the eternal light within the boundaries of nature. All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass (Isa. 40:6). It is God who alone has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16).

But on the other hand, nowhere does such a brilliant perspective for man and the world and history appear as in the biblical conception of the future. This perishable nature, it is said, must put on the imperishable; this mortal nature must put on immortality (1 Cor. 15:53). It does not have this naturally. It is not the wave of eternity which moves it toward the coasts of immortality. But it will receive it as a gift from out of the hands of the eternal and immortal God. It will bear the clothes of immortality in God’s final triumph and in his eternal Kingdom, not because of its own nature, but because of the glory of his holy Name.

Let God Be God

The final triumph, the eternal Kingdom, in the biblical representation is an undeniable certainty because God is God.

When the Sadducees, who said that there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with their unbelieving questions, Jesus answered them: “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God … have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Matt. 22:29–32 RSV).

“He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” This is the biblical proof of resurrection and of God’s final triumph. It is not the conception of man and nature; it is the conception of God which forms the formation of the Christian belief in eternal life. Because God has created the world and because he has redeemed men out of the power of sin and death, the Bible displays a great and mighty light shining at the end of all God’s ways in history. Belief in the eternal Kingdom is belief in God. You cannot believe in God without believing in the final immortality of the world and man. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living.

Therefore in his eternal Kingdom there is not only place for heavens but also for the earth; not only for angels, but also for men; not only is there eternal life for soul and spirit, but also for the body.

The Bible contains not the slightest trace of spiritualism, either in the description of the end or in that of the beginning. Therefore, the Bible can depict the glory of eternal life in the colors of the earthly. For the triumph of God in all the works of his hands fills his eternal Kingdom with glory. God does not save the heavens and leave the earth in the power of his enemy; nor does he save the soul alone from the horror of death. The new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven upon earth and the kings of the earth shall bring their glory and the honor of nations into it. And “Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For thy dew is a dew of light, and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall” (Isa. 26:19). This all-embracing glorification forms the content of the biblical conception of the kingdom of God. The Gospel of the Kingdom, as it has found provisional realization in the first coming of Christ, is the Gospel of the redemption of the earth. The Kingdom of heaven consists for the poor in spirit in the inheritance of the earth (Matt. 5:3, 5). And the signs of the Kingdom are in the blind men who receive sight, in the lame that walk, in the lepers that are cleansed, in the deaf that hear, and in the dead who are raised up (Matt. 11:5). Yea, the storms become still and the towering seas lay calm and flat and waveless before his feet, as a sign and guarantee of the new world of God. Therefore, the New Testament speaks of the reconciliation of all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by the blood of the Cross. For Christ brings the kingdom of God in its full and cosmic sense. He, the first-born of all creation, is not only the head of the body, the Church; but in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell (Col. 1:15–19). For God has put all things in subjection and he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15:25).

In this conception of God and of the kingdom of God lies the nature and the strength of the biblical belief in immortal life and the eternal world to come. This faith is not built upon human imagination. It is no mere projection of a perfect future in an imperfect world, for the biblical belief is not under the delusion of human dignity. It does not underrate the power of sin and death, neither does it borrow its strength from spiritual dreams. It is belief in the future only because and insofar as it is belief in God and in his Kingdom.

The same holds good for the content of this belief. The picture of the future world is only a picture of the glory of God. It is not this world of sin and death, it is not this flesh and blood, that can inherit immortality. All things will be saved, but only as through fire. In this sense the holy Scripture says that heaven and earth will pass away (Matt. 5:18; 24:35); that they will perish and grow old like a garment (Ps. 102:26; Heb. 1:11); that the heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will be dissolved with fire and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up (2 Pet. 3:10). (It is not certain that these words “burned up” express the original meaning of the text. Some manuscripts say “will be found,” or “will not be found,” or “will vanish.” The original text cannot be fixed with certainty.)

This all means the judgment of the holy God on a sinful and unholy world. But it does not mean an annihilation of the world. The apostle Paul says very clearly that the form of this world is passing away (1 Cor. 7:31). The same creation that now is subjected to futility, in the final triumph will be set free from its bondage to decay unto the liberty and glory of the children of God (Rom. 8:21). It is a passing away of the world of sin and iniquity; it is the appearance of new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Pet. 3:13). For God “will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3–4). All the figures and pictures in the Bible stress in principle only one thing: the glory of God will be the salvation of men and the salvation of men will consist in the glorification of God.

That does not mean an eternal standstill. Revealed in these symbols and figures is the new and great rule of life, the order of the new world. Revelation enables us to turn our hearts to the future. Biblical apocalypse has another scope than to feed our fantasy: its scope and purpose are to strengthen our faith, and hope and love. God will be glorified in all the works of his hands; that is the final triumph. And all men, who in their waiting for the unveiled revelation of all his virtues have received the Spirit of sonship, will enter into the 12 gates of the new and imperishable city of God, to live the life of men in the light of God. That is the eternal Kingdom.

Herman N. Ridderbos has been Professor of New Testament at Kampen Seminary in The Netherlands since 1942. He received the Th.D. degree from Free University, Amsterdam, in 1936, and served as a minister of the Reformed Church before his seminary appointment. He is Editor-in-chief of Gereformeerd Weekblad and is author of numerous books.

Whatever problems the evangelical view may create, it commendably upholds the inspiration and revelation-status of Scripture. This recognition keeps faith with the witness of Scripture itself, and with the historic Christian confidence in the Bible.

A Fairer Hearing

For many years misunderstood and often misrepresented, the evangelical view today seems to be evaluated more objectively and temperately. No doubt the evangelical position is still deplored in some circles as anti-intellectual, in much the same spirit as a generation ago some groups disparaged and dismissed original sin, the atonement and other realities that now once again are lively centers of theological interest. The recent volume Fundamentalism and the Church by Gabriel Hebert reveals that the old innuendos about “bibliolatry” and “mechanical dictation” are not gone, but failure to stigmatize fundamentalism with a mechanical and naive literalist view of inspiration is increasingly evident. Fundamentalists have long been unable to recognize their own view in such attacks, since they themselves reject the formulas so frequently ascribed to them. One of their British theologians, J. I. Packer, recently commented that the “dictation theory” of the psychology of inspiration is “a complete hoax.” He insists that evangelical and Protestant theologians have never held it; that there is no evidence to think that even the Church Fathers used the “dictation” metaphor to explain the mode of inspiration (The Christian News Letter, July, 1957, p. 37). Even its larger outlines should dissolve complaints that the evangelical view narrows revelation to the Bible, that it is anti-intellectual, or that it is wholly disinterested in the bearing of the actual textual phenomena on the doctrine of Scripture.

Pivotal points of the evangelical view of revelation are:

1. The evangelical view distinguishes the personal Word of God, the Logos Theou, from the Word of God written, or the Hrema Theou. It affirms the priority of the personal or speaking Word over the spoken or written Word.

2. All revelation of God is revelation by the Logos.

3. This revelation is both general and special. God is revealed in nature, history and conscience, as well as in Scripture. The Bible witnesses to the reality of this general revelation (Ps. 19, Rom. 1:19 ff., 2:15 ff.).

4. Special revelation is itself broader than Scripture. While the Bible states all the essentials for salvation and spiritual maturity, the written record has not always existed. Abraham received special revelation but we have no reason to think he had scriptures. While our Lord’s spoken word was revelation, not all his teaching is recorded. Moreover, there is an eschatological fulfillment yet to come. For another reason special revelation must be considered broader than the Bible, which is shaped for a fallen race in need of salvation. Even by creation and before the fall, God specially revealed his will to man (Gen. 2:16). This fact indicates that even man’s creatureliness, and not his subsequent sinfulness alone, involved this special dependency on God.

5. Special revelation includes God’s redemptive events climaxed by the incarnation of the Logos, his atonement and resurrection. Without these great realities, special revelation is reduced to an inspired literature. What lifts Hebrew-Christian religion head and shoulders above the pagan religions is not simply its possession of “the oracles of God,” but the dynamic related plot these writings record. The living climax of that plot is the Logos who makes all things, illumines man in the divine image, discloses himself as the secret center of nature and history, and by his triumph over sin and death rescues a doomed race.

6. These redemptive events do not stand before us without interpretation. Scripture gives the authentic sense or meaning of the divine saving acts. While the Bible mirrors both general and special revelation, and affirms that the incarnate Logos translates God into the world of flesh, the Bible also captures that revelation in intelligible language. Revelation is dynamically broader than the Bible, but epistemologically Scripture gives us more of the revelation of the Logos than we would have without the Bible.

7. What then is the connection of the Bible and special revelation? According to the evangelical view, the Bible is a record of special revelation, and a witness to special revelation, if by the terms “record” and “witness” we do not mean the Bible is only a record and witness. Even to affirm that the Bible “contains” special revelation is quite acceptable if one intends no distinction between essence and content, but implies thereby, as does the Westminster Catechism, the unique inspiration of the whole of Scripture. For the evangelical view affirms that alongside the special divine revelation in saving acts, God’s disclosure has taken the form also of truths and words. This revelation is communicated in a restricted canon of trustworthy writings, deeding fallen man an authentic exposition of God and his purposes. Scripture itself therefore is an integral part of God’s redemptive activity, a special form of revelation, a unique mode of divine disclosure. It is, in truth, a decisive factor in God’s redemptive activity, interpreting and unifying the whole series of redemptive deeds, and exhibiting their divine meaning and significance.

Whether one appeals to Augustine or Aquinas, to Luther or Calvin, he finds the selfsame confidence in this revelatory character of the Word written as characterized the biblical writers. The Bible is for them, as for evangelical theology generally, special revelation in a normative and trustworthy form. Its difference from other sacred books of the world religions is no mere matter of degree. Rather, a special activity of divine inspiration differentiates it in kind from every other literature. This explains why the Hebrew-Christion religion has characteristically identified itself with a canon of unique writings that fulfill a divine intention of communicating special revelation. This idea of a canon did not originate suddenly in the early Christian centuries, as if by accident or by human impulse; it was a conviction already cherished by Hebrew religion, and accredited to the Christian conscience by Jesus of Nazareth. What the spirit says to the churches is, for evangelical Christianity, what is written in the inspired books. The content of this special divine revelation is to be found by historical-grammatical exegesis.

Evangelical Landmarks

While a generation ago it was customary to disparage this view as anti-intellectualistic, today it is popular to despise it as rationalistic. This remarkable change in the militant mood of apologetics reflects, of course, some important facts about recent Protestant theology. One is its basic philosophic instability that lodged first in the mires of Hegelian rationalism, and then in the muck of post-Hegelian irrationalism. Another feature is its persistent failure to rise above the fictitious disjunction that Schleiermacher first impressed upon the history of Christian thought, namely, that divine revelation consists in impartation of life, not of doctrine. The Protestant Reformers were careful to guard the Christian heritage against such errors of rationalism, irrationalism and mysticism. To prevent Christianity’s decline to mere metaphysics, they indeed stressed that the Holy Spirit alone gives life. But to prevent debasement of the Christian religion to formless mysticism or to speculative rationalism, the Reformers emphasized the Scriptures as the only trustworthy source of the knowledge of God and his purposes. These historic positions are still landmarks of the evangelical view.

Every exposition of revelation and inspiration stands in some larger context. The doctrine of Scripture necessarily implies a compatible and congenial doctrine of God; it cannot be isolated from actual dependence upon the nature and manifestation of God. Overarching the evangelical view is the cardinal fact of God’s sovereignty in his being and activity, in his goodness and truth, and especially in his supremacy in the realm of truth as God of the Covenant. Unlike the irrationalistic metaphysics that surcharges the theology of Kierkegaard, Barth and Brunner, the evangelical doctrine postulates a view of God, of his image in man, of the divine renewal of that image coherent with the biblical representations of revelation.

God And His Image

The biblical delineation of revelation and reason does not hesitate to lodge the Logos unreservedly in the Godhead. Truth and goodness are not external criteria to which the Deity is answerable. Rather, truth and goodness are God’s essence, so that his very nature itself defines rationality and morality. This concept we know to be basic in the Hebrew-Christian doctrine of God.

A rational God has ordered a rational universe in which rational creatures created in his image are to think his thoughts after him and to do them. This fact of a rational Creator maintains the unity of the general divine revelation in nature, history and man. That man bears the image of God by creation (Gen. 1:26), that he is uniquely lighted by the Logos (John 1:9), is one of Scripture’s profoundest teachings about him. It supplies the setting also for some of the most intricate controversies in contemporary theology. Barth has had at least two theories of the imago Dei thus far, and Brunner at least three. It may be fruitful, by way of contrast, to consider a view currently advocated in evangelical circles as an alternative, since it transcends the tensions tearing many of the newer theories. The image of God in man constitutes man a spiritual-rational-moral agent. It includes therefore, at very least, the forms of reason and conscience, and the idea of God. What man knows, he knows through the law of contradiction, or he does not know. The laws of logic therefore belong to the imago Dei. This propels us directly into the analysis of the form and the content of reason. Recent generations largely accepted the view of Kant or of the evolutionists. Kant said that the form of reason is innate, but that experience supplies its content; the evolutionists said that experience supplies both form and content. The scriptural view requires a reference to the imago Dei for both the form and content of reason. Moreover, the Scriptures do not separate reason, conscience and worship as if these were independent considerations.

The imago Dei does include man’s formal realization that truth and error, right and wrong, God and not-God are genuine distinctions. But the imago Dei is more than formal; it is material as well. The very forms of the imago (including the laws of logic; the essential unity of the ideas of truth and goodness and God) belong to its content. Man as sinner no doubt crowds the imago with a distorted and perverse content; he falsifies the truth and dignifies the lie; he misjudges the right and consecrates the wrong; he revolts against the one true God and worships false gods. But he is not wholly lacking, on that account, of a transcendent imago-content that confronts him throughout this perversion and judges him. Even in his rebellion, man is confronted moment-by-moment in his experience by knowledge of the one true God—disclosed in nature and history around him and in conscience within. He is unable wholly to destroy this knowledge in his very corruption of it. Therefore conscience, like a sheriff, marshals him constantly before the judgment throne of God. You will discern here the familiar outlines of the Bible doctrine of general revelation, pieced together from Psalm 19 and Romans 1 and 2.

From the outset this exposition sets human experience in the context of revelation and faith. But it does not devalue the intellect, as does contemporary theology. Nor does it exaggerate the role of reason, as does Thomistic philosophy. Before the Fall, man’s reason was subject to God and his will subject to reason; therefore, his voluntary actions were conformed to truth. After the Fall, man’s reason was in the service of a will in revolt against God. Yet man is not on that account without some knowledge of God and the truth and the right, however much he may distort them.

Redemption aims not simply at man’s restoration to obedience, but to truth as well. It seeks his return both to the service and to the knowledge of God. The immediate end of redemption is renewal of man’s knowledge of God for the ultimate end of man’s total conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. Redemptive revelation and regeneration, therefore, encompass the predicament of the whole man, who was fashioned by creation for the knowledge and service of God. Redemptive revelation and regeneration seek reinstatement of intellect, no less than of volition and emotion, to the fellowship of divine conversation. If it were not so, theologians and seminarians could proclaim the great fact of special divine revelation, and yet would be free to stuff this form with a thought-content and a word-content of their own. But God wishes man both to walk in his ways and to think his thoughts after him; hence the language of revelation, like the language of prayer, takes the form of concepts and words.

Editor Carl F. H. Henry’s address was delivered at Union Theological Seminary in New York City recently under auspices of the Student Forum Committee. An evangelical symposium on the same theme will be published later this year by Baker Book House. Dr. Henry is serving as general editor of the project, which will include chapters by distinguished evangelical scholars from many denominations in many lands.

Christianity has been the greatest influence in building the American concept of democracy. Both Christianity and democracy begin with the individual, and they stress the infinite worth of individual man.

Without Christian laymen who applied their religious philosophy to governmental decisions, there would have been no American Declaration of Independence or Constitution of the United States as we know them today. Without the application of moral and religious concepts in the laws of our land, we would be no better off than other countries of the world today.

We believe in separation of Church and State in this land, but never have we believed in separation of Church and statesmen. As Christian laymen in the early days of this country worked not only for their churches and their God, but also for application of moral and religious principles in the political and governmental decisions of the nation, so must we carry on that same important responsibility. This is especially true in this day of materialism and science when so many people are losing sight of important spiritual considerations and opportunities.

Someone has said that in our day we have learned to fly through the air like the birds of the sky and to glide through the waters like the fish of the sea, but we have not learned to live on this earth like human beings.

Detraction From The Spiritual

And now, before learning to live like brothers on this earth, we have upon us a great rush into outer space—a competitive race of science and material progress in attempt to place and control satellites in outer space.

Man’s attention is being drawn away from the spiritual essentials into the material stratosphere. Satellites are circling the earth once every 96 minutes. This is a fantastic speed for earthbound mortals to comprehend—nearly five miles per second. The Soviet Union has beaten us in the race of physical objects in outer space. There is much excitement in America for a full-scale scientific crusade to assure our country of every possible achievement for progress and adequate defense in the world in which we live.

On the other hand, when people talk about putting all the resources of their country behind a better sputnik in outer space, I cannot help but think of the need for placing more of our resources into a closer contact with the power in outer space which is greater than any man-made ball or ballistic—the power which has dominion over outer and inner space, yea over our very lives and destinies—our God in Heaven.

We are ahead of the Russian communists in that we have contact with God, and unless they are converted from their atheistic beliefs, they will never catch up with us. But this will be true only if we do not fail in our duty to emphasize and thus follow the way of Christianity.

Our destiny does not lie in our drive to be the first to set foot on the moon, or to have a space station for future conquests in our solar system. Our true destiny lies in an understanding of Him who is the power that governs outer space and the destinies of nations and men on this world.

In all this excitement over the satellites, I have heard not one speech concerning the urgent need for our people to expand and develop the philosophy and ideals which truly put us in touch with the God of the universe and assure us of his help. Our forefathers, perhaps, had a stronger grasp of this urgency than we do in this age of materialism and great technological progress. You have been reminded many times of the South American visitor who was asked to explain why the material progress of North America had so far outstripped that of South America. His reply was: “The people who settled North America came here seeking God. Those who came to South America were in search of gold.”

It will do us all good to recall the religious background of the settlers of these United States. Through all American history there runs a golden thread of deep religious conviction. The spirit of religion guided the pilgrims to the New England coast. In framing the Mayflower Compact they started with the words: “In the name of God. Amen.” The illustrious founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn, once said in an address: “If we are not ruled by God, we will be ruled by tyrants.” And the Declaration of Independence makes this statement: “We hold these truths to be self-evident—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is significant also that when material considerations were about to fail in the convention called at Philadelphia to write the United States Constitution, the men turned their attentions to the spiritual. Benjamin Franklin suggested humble prayer to God for assistance, and you know the result. The coins of this nation were stamped “In God We Trust.”

These examples should chart the course for us as Americans—and as children of God.

Christianity And Liberty

The Christian faith, when it is fully understood, has always promoted the liberty of the individual and the dignity of mankind. These same principles of Christianity offer us the best course toward the achievement of international understanding and peace. These Christian ideals and the reliance upon the strong hand of God give us also the answer to the spread of Communism.

We in this nation have something the communists do not have, and that is the deep, ingrown faith in a God which enables men to rise above the struggles of the materialistic world and seek the heavens in their true perspective. This is our opponents’ greatest weakness. They are professed materialists and enemies of religion. Karl Marx wrote: “Religion is the sign of the oppressed creature, the feelings of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of unspiritual conditions. It is the opium of the people.” And Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev took up the Marxist mantle and spread the same false doctrine over the world.

The Communist Surge

Today, Communism rules by force nearly one billion people—a third of the world’s population. Ironically, this surge of Communism compares in history only with the advances of Christianity. Two thousand years ago, when Christ brought his message to earth, he gathered about him 12 men, and from the lips of those men Christianity spread like wildfire throughout the Western world.

Are we to concede that Christianity offers less than Communism, and thereby “write off” the latter’s conquests as philosophical victories which we failed to match? Christians know this is not true. They know that the atheists who preach the communist doctrine are attempting the impossible when they seek to stamp out mankind’s spiritual heritage and replace it with a new set of values based on utility and materialism.

Love of country and love of God are inseparable ingredients. Democracy, a by-product of the teachings of Christ, emphasizes that government should be a servant and not a master. It was Lenin who admitted: “When religion is strong, Communism is weak.” And that is an admission by the communist world that they can hope to succeed only by controlling the minds of men and stamping out all religious beliefs that stand in the way.

It disturbs me that the communists have been preaching to more people in recent years than have the Christians. I regret that some people in this country believe that we should become a material fortress as the best means of fighting Communism. They seem to say there is no time for God in the struggle for armed superiority. But if we yield to this temptation, someday we shall find that we have assumed the likeness of that which threatens us and which will be our own destruction.

We must arm, certainly. We cannot allow ourselves to be engulfed by the dictatorship of the Soviet Union. At the same time, we must never take our eyes away from the God of the universe. Americans believe that the true course is the course that leads to God. The hope of the world lies in men’s willingness to seek this course.

Price Daniel is the Governor of Texas. A Baptist lay leader, he delivered these remarks on November 5, 1957 at the annual State Baptist Brotherhood Convention. Governor Daniel is an alumnus of Baylor University. After a newspaper career he was elected to the Senate. He became Governor of Texas in 1957.

“Imperialism” is a word that has been somewhat prostituted in recent years. The moral splendour of Britain’s service for those whom she had in imperial sway has been too easily forgotten. For, at its best, imperialism in earlier days was not only a fundamentally Christian concept, the devotion of men and women to the welfare of peoples with less advantages than themselves, but it offered a field of deliberate Christian service.

Motives Lifted In India

Nowhere is this shown better than in the story of Britain’s Indian Empire.

Not that Britain entered India with Christian intentions—far from it. In the eighteenth century the East India Company regarded the territory as a source of trade and revenue, and had no concern whatever for the souls of its people. But in 1773 a Scotsman in the Company’s service, Charles Grant, after leave in Britain landed in Calcutta “under deep concern for the state of my soul.… There was no person then living in Calcutta from whom I could obtain any information as to the way of a sinner’s salvation.” In one of the foreign enclaves nearby the Swedish evangelist Kiernander showed it to him. Thenceforth, as a younger contemporary said, “A new principle of action governed him, a profound and abiding sense of his obligation as a Christian, and grateful and affecting remembrance of the mercies of God in Jesus Christ.”

Grant spent much of his last years attempting to persuade the East India Company to introduce Christian missions to India under official patronage. Dutch governments supported missions in their colonies but the British East India Company not only refused, it would not even allow missionaries to enter India (though some did come in the guise of chaplains to the European community) until forced to do so in 1813 by the efforts of Grant and his fellow members of the “Clapham Sect.”

In his attitude to those he ruled, Charles Grant was the prototype of the nineteenth century civil official in India; but it was James Thomason of the next generation, son of an early evangelical chaplain in Calcutta, who, as a trainer of men in the North West Province, imbued the service with his own Christian approach.

Transforming The Punjab

In the Punjab, which in the late 1840s and early ’50s was transformed from a blood-drenched independent land of misery into a flourishing British province, a remarkable set of Thomason’s Christians were at the helm, the best remembered being the two Lawrences, Henry and John, differing in personality but one in faith. When John was promoted over Henry’s head, it was to prayer that they resorted, the one in his hopes and the other in his acute disappointment; and Henry committed John to the Lord. Another was Reynell Taylor, one of the pacifiers of the frontier. “A saint on earth,” he was described by his assistant, Sir Richard Pollock, a great-uncle of the present writer; “duty and religion were stamped on all he did.” Young John Nicholson, later the “hero of Delhi,” made such an impact on the tribesmen that they founded a sect to worship “Nikalsain,” despite his wrath (and he flogged each devotee). When the tribesmen heard of his death in action at 35, a leader of the sect committed suicide, but another said “that was not the way to serve their great master; if they ever hoped to see him again they must learn to worship Nicholson’s God.”

Nicholson’s great friend, and perhaps the most attractive of all these Christian leaders in the Punjab, was Sir Herbert Edwardes. “This great country India,” he said, “has been put into our hands that we might give it light.” He fervently believed that if the British administration itself (and not merely individual administrators) had been more openly Christian, the Indian Mutiny would not have occurred; for undoubtedly one of its causes had been a false understanding of the nature of Christianity, and a fear that the government intended forcible conversion to Christianity. “An open Bible,” Edwardes pleaded, “put it in your schools, stand avowedly as a Christian government.” Only then would India be truly fitted for freedom, “leavened with Christianity.”

Sir Bartle Frere, Governor of Sind, a strong supporter personally of missions, who “felt convinced that the conversion of the natives to Christianity was the greatest blessing our rulers could confer on them,” differed from Edwardes in deprecating the teaching of the Bible in state schools except to such as freely asked for it. He believed that to link in any way mission work with government would be disastrous.

Should Christianity Be Imposed?

These opposing views show up the greatest problem in the matter of Christian imperialism. As may be seen in the Philippines or (on a smaller scale) in Goa, the Spanish and Portuguese imposed their form of Christianity on those they ruled. Should the British have attempted to have done so in India? What would have been the result? In New Delhi not long ago I discussed this point with Prime Minister Nehru. He was emphatic that such a policy would have bred the strongest resistance from Hindus and Mohammedans and would have made government impossible. But it was not the Protestant way to cast a thin veneer of Christianity over peoples still at heart non-Christian. Protestant nations could not approach these races as the sixteenth century Jesuit Ricci approached China. It had been Ricci’s belief that if only he could convert the Emperor and persuade him to sign the appropriate decree, four hundred million people would thereby enter the Roman Catholic fold.

The most that the British official could do was to give his personal encouragement to missions; as in the example of Edwardes who presided at the launching of the frontier mission at Peshawar, or Sir Robert Montgomery (grandfather of the World War II leader) who took steps to install the Church Missionary Society at Lucknow in 1858 almost before the dust had settled from the siege, or Sir William Muir, who founded the North India Tract Society, and after retirement was a missionary treasurer.

Officials could and did support the social ameliorations brought about by missionaries, and Christianity in some sense did creep onto the Indian statute book—as in the example of its concept of the sacredness of life (widow-burning and infanticide being abolished), the freedom of the individual conscience (stoning or mutilation of converts from Islam being forbidden), and the equality of sexes (Hindu widows being permitted to marry, the zenanas opened). Despite these efforts, however, many of the reforming laws did long remain dead letters.

Administrator A Civil Father

Above all else such men served Christ by impregnating the civil service with the attitude that the administrator, at each level, was to be father of his people. So many British Christians made Indian government their life work that it became one of the noblest professions, in which Christian values normally were upheld even by those who lacked personal faith.

As the nineteenth century gave way to the twentieth the number of strong Christians in civil services decreased, though there were always some right down to the end of 1947; but the British in India were by this time reflecting the British at home where the climate of secular reaction was taking its toll. In Britain the post-Victorian generation, which maintained Christian values while rejecting individual commitment, failed to solve the national and international problems of its age, and thus bequeathed to its successors a morally chaotic world. So in India—the British could not find a way whereby independence, towards which the imperial government had long worked, would keep the sub-continent undivided, its races and religions living together in the harmony which characterized the British power at its zenith. Whether a way would have been found had there remained many vigorously spiritual men in the administration, and the Christian theory of government had still been matched by the faith of its leaders, is one of the “ifs” of history.

Could India have become Christian while under the British? “If India were converted the gain would be cheaply purchased by the loss of our Empire in India,” wrote a mid-nineteenth century governor. The Empire is now handed over (not lost); yet whereas the religions of India in early British days were moribund, they are now vigorous, and the national churches a small minority.

Flaws In Christian Approach

Part of the trouble developed from the naive view of many distinguished missionaries and men of affairs that India could be won to Christ by education. Vast numbers of Indians, men and later women, passed through Christian schools; but both to them and to their teachers education implied Western education, and thus imperceptibly the religious faith became identified with Western civilization. When Indian nationalism emerged, it revived Hinduism and the other religions as expression of the national spirit, while forgetting (as Prime Minister Nehru does not forget today) that Christianity is itself one of the ancient religions of India with an unbroken history on the Malabar coast from at least the fourth century. But once Christianity was identified with the West, its progress was severely hindered.

More tragic, however, was the failure of so many “Christian” British, especially in the military services, to commend their faith by their lives. “Let us set our own house in order,” said Sir Bartle Frere in 1859, “and remove the reproach cast against us by all native opponents: ‘You spend thousands of pounds to convert one low caste Hindu, but you do not move a finger to prevent your sailors and soldiers from being examples of the grossest vices in every bazaar they frequent.’” As the century wore on much improvement could be noted, but never up to the end were the military or business communities, as a whole, positive advertisements for Christ.

In the memory of this particular failure, even more than in the record of the Christian intentions and attitude of the administrators, lies the practical lesson for today, not only for the British but for all the English-speaking peoples. Empires have gone, but business and travel have increased. All over the East there are thousands of men and women of Western countries at work or passing through, whose religion is listed as Christian. It is they who can commend Him whose name they bear. They, sometimes more than the missionaries, can declare Christ to be Lord of all the earth by showing him to be Lord of their lives, and by active support of local Christian effort.

The British had high claim to be called Christian imperialists, but we failed because of our spiritual recession at home to fulfill the dreams of the Christian administrators of a hundred years ago. In the different circumstances of today all Christian nations have renewed opportunity to manifest His name to those who know not Christ as Saviour nor worship him as King.

J. C. Pollock is Editor of The Churchman, quarterly journal of Anglican theology, and is Rector of Horsington, Somerset.

In 1909 Arthur James Balfour, the former Prime Minister of England, was speaking at the University of Edinburgh on “The Moral Values Which Unite Nations.” In his address, he discussed different ties that bind together the peoples of the world—ties of common knowledge, commerce, diplomatic relationships, and bonds of human friendship. When he was done, a Japanese student studying at the Scottish university got up and asked this question. “But, Mr. Balfour, what about Jesus Christ?” According to an American professor who was there, you could have heard a pin drop. There was dead silence, as those present felt the justice of the rebuke. A leading statesman of a Christian nation had been dealing with ties that are to unite men and had left out the one essential bond. And the reminder of his forgetfulness came from a student from a far off non-Christian land.

“What about Jesus Christ?” Today, when human problems are of a complexity and seriousness undreamed of in 1909, the question is still relevant. More than ever before, it needs to be asked. And it is wholly in keeping with this service in which in a special way the Bible is before our thoughts that we consider it, for to do so is to go to the very heart of the Bible’s message.

Our text is in John’s Gospel, the fourteenth chapter and the sixth verse, where Jesus says to Thomas: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father but by me.”

Have you ever been talking to a friend in regard to some book you have been reading—one that you have found especially interesting or significant? If so, you know that it was not long before your friend said to you something like this: “But what’s it about?” Or, he may have put it more pointedly and said: “What’s it all about?” So it is with the Bible. “What’s it about?” is a question that we not only have a right to ask, but also one that we are obligated to consider, if we think at all seriously regarding life.

Now there are many answers to the question as to what the Bible is about. From one point of view this Book is like a great tapestry into which are woven many symbols, many pictures, many precepts. The Bible is about history and morality, about human nature and sin. It tells not only about the past but also about the future, about heaven and hell. It is about God and his greatness and righteousness, his justice and his love, and what he requires of us men. The Bible is “about” these things. But when we come to the more particular question, “What is the Bible all about?” there is just one chief answer. It is this: above everything else, the Bible is all about Jesus Christ. In the deepest and most living way, its purpose is to tell us about him who, as our text says, is “the way, the truth, and the life.”

There is a tendency today to speak of this atomic age as the most important time in the history of the world. It is nothing of the kind. The most significant time in human history was the span of some 30 years that covered the life of one man in first-century Palestine. On a road in the Canadian West between Alberta and British Columbia there is a massive wooden arch on which is written in large letters, “The Great Divide.” It reminds travellers of the nearby Continental Divide, the place from which water flows west into the Pacific and east into Hudson Bay. But the dividing point of the ages is not a wooden arch; it is a wooden cross set up on a hill outside the city of Jerusalem nearly two thousand years ago. And the plain facts about Jesus Christ, such as the long preparation for his coming in the Old Testament, and the New Testament facts of his wonderful birth, his perfect life, his marvelous teaching, his atoning death in which he shed blood for our redemption, and his glorious resurrection—these are vastly more significant for mankind than anything else that has ever happened in the history of the world.

These are the things that the Bible is all about. Let us go on, then, to look at them through the lens, as it were, of our text. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” It is significant that these words have recently been before the eyes of more people than have ever before looked at any Scripture text. For fifteen and a half weeks of the New York Crusade, this Scripture verse was on a great banner behind the platform, over the choir at Madison Square Garden, and facing crowds totaling two million. So also it was seen by multitudes in London, Glasgow, and other great cities here and abroad. But though the words are not emblazoned on a banner before us this morning, we may see them in our mind’s eye and hear them in our hearts.

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Notice that this is not what some prophet or apostle or saint of old said about Christ. It is Jesus’ own words regarding himself, his own considered estimate of himself, a great declaration of self-witness. And it sets him apart from all other religious leaders with an awesome exclusiveness, as the second clause of our verse shows: “no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” It is plain, therefore, that he is not merely one of a number of equally good ways, but that he is in full reality the only way; and that those who would know the truth that makes men free and find the life more abundant, must do so through him.

‘Like Sheep Gone Astray’

Have you ever lost your way in the hills, on a desert, or in the dense bush of some forest? If you have, you know how terrifying an experience it may be with panic just around the corner. It’s not a pleasant feeling to be lost—if only for a few hours.

But there’s another kind of lostness. A few weeks ago a young man, referred to me by another headmaster, came to my office. He had gone to the University of Chicago, but had given up. He was all at sea emotionally. And the reason, in his own words, was simply this: “I have no purpose in life. There’s nothing to live for. What’s the use of going on?” That young man was really lost. What he needed was not to be told where to go to school and what to study. He needed to find the way; he needed to find it inside his heart and life, so that he might have a purpose. Every atheist knows the importance of having a purpose. Said Jean Paul Satré, the French existentialist: “There is no God, but everybody needs something to commit his life to, some philosophy. Find the philosophy, find the cause, find the movement and commit your life to it.” But philosophies, causes, movements, will never really find the lost.

The Bible makes it plain that we have all missed our way. In the fifty-third chapter of his prophecy which points so clearly to the Saviour, Isaiah says: “All we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned everyone to his own way.” But Christ is the true and living way, because he died to bring us back to God.

Again, he is the truth. In the words of the text, Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Nothing shows more clearly his uniqueness than this declaration. Philosophy goes so far and no farther. Even the greatest thinkers can only point men to what they assume to be the truth. They can only say: “This seems to be the best explanation of the universe,” or, “This appears to be the right frame reference for life.” But no philosopher would dare point to himself and say, as Christ said with absolute and complete assurance: “I am the truth.”

“But wait a moment,” someone says. “How can one person be big enough to be the truth?” The answer is the great reality of the deity of Christ, the stupendous fact that, though fully man, he is at the same time God. Therefore, to ask whether Christ is big enough to be the truth is the same thing as to ask whether God is big enough to be the truth, a question that answers itself. A recent book by J. B. Phillips bears the title, Your God is Too Small. After showing the inadequacy of a dozen or so commonly held ideas of God, the author proves that God in Christ is alone big enough for the great issues of life and death and eternity.

Christ Is The Answer

But our text goes on to declare that Christ is also the life, for Jesus said: “I am … the life.” In his letter to the Colossians, St. Paul uses this phrase, “Christ who is our life.” There are many today who confuse Christianity, which is the faith of the Bible, with certain related things. But Christianity is not the church, a vital part of it though the church is; it is not theology, essential though theology is; it is not worship, though worship is obligatory. Nor is it even doing good and loving one’s neighbor, although there is no true practice of Christianity without this. All these belong to Christianity and are indispensable to it, but they are not its very heart. Christianity is Christ. Like the hub of a wheel, he is its center. For without the life that is in him, there is no hope. Said St. Paul, in voicing his highest aspiration, “That I may know him.” And in his last letter he bore this witness: “I know whom I have believed.”

Summer before last I spent some time at Mount Robson, British Columbia, where I camped and climbed with fellow mountaineers of the Alpine Club of Canada. On a rainy day, a group of us were drinking tea in a tent. A discussion began and, as bull sessions so often do, it turned to religion. Not only that, but it became highly skeptical in tone. Finally the talk veered to Christ. At this point a young scientist turned to me with a rather patronizing air and said: “But you don’t really believe, do you, that Jesus is the Son of God?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I do.”

“But how can you prove it?” he said. “How do you know it is true?”

I shall never forget what followed. I simply did what any other convinced Christian would have done; I looked him straight in the eye and said: “How do I know that Jesus is the Son of God? I know it, because I know him personally.” For at least a half minute our eyes locked. Then he turned away. The argument was over. So it is that when Christ is really our life, we know him with an immediacy of personal knowledge that is unmistakable.

Long before the Japanese student asked that question of Lord Balfour, Jesus had asked it of the Pharisees when he said to them in public debate two days before his crucifixion, “What think you of Christ? Whose son is he?” He asked it for a decision, just as the Bible keeps on asking it for a decision of everyone who reads it. As A. M. Chirgwin said in discussing the origin of the New Testament, “The New Testament writers were not just writing history; they were writing for a verdict.” And that verdict is given in one way only—through believing in Him whom the Bible is all about.

In the words of St. John that are printed on the frontispiece of the Bibles presented this morning: “These are written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you might have life through his name.”

Dr. J. G. Paton, the great Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides in the South Pacific, was translating the New Testament into the dialect of the islanders. He was working on the sixteenth chapter of Acts which tells how, after Paul and Silas were released from prison in Philippi through an earthquake, the jailer asked how to be saved. Paton was hard put to find the precise translation of the all-important word “believe.” He overheard a native who was working on a ladder use a certain expression, and knew then and there that his problem was solved. Whereupon, Paton rendered the reply to the question of the Philippian jailer, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” with: “Lean your whole weight on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.”

The whole message of the Word of God, what it is all about, all its helpfulness and power, comes alive in us when we lean our whole weight—our sin, our need, our ability, our weakness and our strength, our hopes, the entire weight of our lives—upon Jesus Christ. Gentlemen, along with these Bibles goes the challenge to you who receive them and to all of us in this chapel to read the Scriptures regularly, daily, prayerfully that through them you may know more and more fully him who is “the way, the truth, and the life.”

E=Mc2

This is the theory of Relativity,

The most profound pronouncement of the human mind.

In South America birds can be taught to say

“Energy equals mass times squared velocity.”

What does it mean to them? To you and me?

To human kind?

Out of this net

We dropped a bomb on Hiroshima.

The Nations walk in fear of it today.

No man, no home, no city can forget.

Is this a formula to sum and doom

All science, progress, life, humanity?

This is the dead-end street of merely human plan.

This is the towering granite of a wall,

A flaming sword is turning every way

To guard a secret from the will of Man

Until in faith, humility, intelligence he comes to pray,

Drawn to a statement of sublime simplicity:

“Let not your hearts be troubled;

Ye believe in God,

Believe in Me.”

CATHERINE ALLER

A sermon preached on 15 September, 1957, in the chapel of the United States Military Academy, West Point, N. Y., at the annual presentation of Bibles by American Tract Society.

One of our supposedly great experts on Communism said a year and a half ago, “There is a finality, for better or worse,” about the communist conquest of Eastern Europe. And some of our people believed it, saying “Well, we must be practical and realistic. We must accept facts.” But was it a fact? Fortunately, within a few weeks a lot of common people marched down a street in Poznan, Poland, crying, “Give us bread—and freedom too!” They proved that the man wasn’t really a great expert or a realist. He was just a defeatist, and completely unrealistic. He had lost faith both in man and in God. He didn’t believe, and many others of us haven’t really believed that the urge of man to be free can be and will be stronger than the tyrant’s sword, or even his police state—that is, if only we don’t betray that urge by building up the tyrant in the vain notion that somehow he may give us freedom and peace and security in our time.

The growing surge to be free came to a climax a year ago last fall in Hungary. Foolish? Yes, just as foolish as the country farmers on a green at Lexington who stood up against the finest professional soldiers of the eighteenth century—but it was those farmers on the green and “by the rude bridge that arched the flood” at Concord who fired “the shot heard ‘round the world” and made possible this freedom which we today enjoy without realizing how great a price was paid for it, or what discipline and dedication and willingness to work for it are necessary if our heritage is to be preserved, fulfilled, strengthened, and shared around the world.

The communists understood the significance of what happened in Hungary better than we did. They were scared into near panic, as we’ve learned from several sources since. They cringed and pulled back. And then, in certainly one of the most tragic coincidences of history, at the very moment when Communism was revealed to be losing in Europe—much weaker than realized—three nations of the West, by starting the adventure at Suez, took it upon themselves to demonstrate that the free world too was much weaker than realized. They repudiated at Suez their pledges in the United Nations Charter that they would not use such non-peaceful methods to try to resolve disputes. The whole episode revealed to the communists how weak and divided the West was. It too was beginning to splinter. And the communists promptly moved back into Hungary.

Parallel Disintegration

That brought us to the showdown. The communists were losing in Europe; but the free world was losing in Asia and Africa. The sixty-four thousand dollar question of our time became: Which would disintegrate the faster, the communist world or the free world? Or, to turn it around: Which could pull itself together the faster and more solidly?

Well, we know now. The communists have made more headway since Hungary in pulling themselves together than the free world has. They learned the plain lesson of Hungary. They knew that they had to win the whole world quickly, including the United States, or this growing urge for freedom would cause them to lose the whole world quickly, including the Soviet Union. They went to work for dear life.

But we of the West hesitated; we groped for the familiar, trying to hang onto “business and politics as usual.” We wanted peace so badly that we’re in danger of losing it—and our freedom. We were not quite willing as a people to face up to the threat. And a democratic government cannot get very far ahead of its people.

The present balance is, of course, that we still lead in certain fields: wealth, basic weapons, especially the older weapons, and productive capacity. But the communists are ahead in manpower, in the newer weapons, in the momentum to create still newer ones, and in will. They know that it is now or never for them; and, therefore, they are reckless and dangerous. They intend to win.

What can we do in such a situation? First of all, we have to WAKE UP to the real nature of the threat. Second, we’ve got to find our way through the series of dilemmas in which we’ve been caught, the dilemmas that have kept us almost paralyzed while the communists, untroubled by Christian conscience, have forged ahead.

They are real dilemmas. How do Christian people deal successfully with unprincipled persons without becoming like them? The Chinese say that in wars adversaries tend to exchange vices. In order to defeat the enemy, we’re tempted to adopt his methods and become just like him. But, why resist him if we’re going to become like him?

Here’s a concrete example: How do we deal successfully with lying words? Take the term “peaceful coexistence.” To us that means peace; but that isn’t what it means to them. They seldom talk about peace—that would mean a genuine settlement. They talk about peaceful coexistence. Why? Because we’re still stronger than they are. They want us to be willing to coexist peacefully until they can become stronger than we—and then they’ll really put the screws on. Peaceful coexistence means peaceful coexistence by us as long as we are stronger; when they can become stronger, it means peaceful submission. How does a tennis team play according to tennis rules with a team that’s playing according to football rules?

Another dilemma is: How do we help our traditional allies in Europe without appearing to approve their old colonial policies and thereby alienating the peoples of Asia? How do we support the West without losing the East? There isn’t any easy answer. We need, for obvious reasons, to stand with England, France, and so on, in Europe; but we cannot support some of their historic policies in Asia without losing the people of Asia who are infected with our own virus of 1776—the determination to be free.

We can go down the list. The former colonial possessions which we’ve helped to gain political independence cannot preserve that freedom unless there be improvement in the living conditions of the people. But how can we give them the economic help they need and still spend all we must for weapons to defend our own independence—and theirs? If we don’t spend more for arms, we invite insecurity—and disaster; if we do spend more, we invite inflation—and disaster. Either way, disaster. What are we to do?

Freedom And Slavery

Again, we say we want nothing but liberty and justice for all—and that’s true. But some say we must not advocate liberty and justice for all, because that would be interfering in the internal affairs of communist-controlled countries; it would “increase tensions” and might provoke them into the very war which we want to prevent—a war that might not win liberty and justice for the oppressed peoples and might instead destroy our own. Yet, if we don’t stand unwaveringly for liberty and justice for others, how can we ask or expect God to help us preserve ours?

How can we hope to remain free with a third of God’s children enslaved? Yet how can we help them become free if we weaken ourselves here at home?

It is certain that we will have to work under self-discipline if we’re going to recover our superiority in weapons without breaking our economy. I am sure we can do this, if we will.

Two Essential Tests

Also, we are going to have to prevent the communists from winning any more victories. No one fails when he is winning. I would urge that we examine every proposal from whatever source it comes by two main tests: If we were to adopt this, would it make stronger or weaker the oppressors? And, the other side of the coin, if we were to follow the suggested course, would it make stronger or weaker the oppressed? Anything that builds up the oppressors or weakens the will to resist of the oppressed, will never bring lasting peace.

This is why we cannot increase trade with communist China, or any of the communist countries. It makes stronger the oppressors. It is why we cannot support the admission of communist China, to the United Nations. That would be a smashing diplomatic victory for the oppressors. The tyrant is strengthened enormously if he is accepted into respectable society. How can the oppressed resist him if the strong accept him? It breaks hearts behind the Iron Curtain whenever the strong free nations do anything that increases the prestige, influence, power of the tyrants whom the oppressed peoples are doing their best to weaken and pull down from within.

These steps are essential, but they are not enough. We must also find more effective ways positively to strengthen and aid all who are striving to remain free or become free. Our government can and must help other governments. But we’ve also got to reach the people. It’s what people think that counts in the end. And that’s why, in addition to better-managed government aid programs, we have to continue, yes, expand in other countries the efforts of private charitable agencies and missionary programs of the church. They give meaning to, and put heart and soul into the government programs, which, by their very nature and government regulations, have to be somewhat rigid and impersonal. Governments impress people with their power, but seldom do they win people’s hearts. All around the world we have agencies like International Cooperation Administration. They administer, but rarely do they minister. What the peoples of the world need most is ministry. That has to come through persons who go not because our government sends them, but because they care about human beings who are in need and who are also God’s children.

As citizens we must support the government programs while trying always to make them more effective—not bigger, but better. But in addition, we must, as Christians, be willing to support more generously the voluntary programs which minister to others for no other reason than human sympathy.

Maybe we will have to sacrifice some minks in order to get more missiles, and give up a little rock-and-roll in order to make more rockets. But these alone won’t do the job. It is the Christian church and Christian people that must be the leaven working in the world to change its character and to transform it.

This is the most important part of our task. I see no way really to resolve the dilemmas with which honest men wrestle, or to solve today’s crushing problems save by going back to the fundamental source of men’s actions—the desires of the human heart. Our basic problem is not missiles, it is men. It is the character of the men who control the missiles, men who deny moral principles and values, men who reject moral judgments, men who scorn moral restraints.

What deals with the human heart? Religion. In short, our greatest need is to recapture a faith in our faith, like the faith the communists have in theirs. Do we really believe in the leaven process? Do we really believe that the Christian gospel presented to men will change their hearts? If so, we’d better work in earnest.

We are never again going to be able to relax until the communist conspiracy gives up its program of world conquest. And it can never give that up until it ceases to be communist. And it cannot cease to be communist until those who belong to it cease to be communists. The way to change Communism is to change communists, that is, to change men through the Gospel.

Surely God did not bring our beloved country to its position of unprecedented power and influence in the world for no great purpose. Surely he expects us and has a right to call on us in this hour of crisis to rise to the occasion and prove ourselves worthy instruments of his will that all men shall be free.

Walter H. Judd’s listing in Who’s Who in America identifies him as “congressman, physician, missionary.” He served as medical missionary in China from 1925–1938, after which he lectured throughout the United States on American foreign policy. He has been a member of the 78th to the 85th Congresses with a vigilant eye on the world strategy of Communism.

Some years ago there was borne in upon me with great conviction an awareness of the inseparable connection of the freedom which we enjoy in the West and the Christian faith. With this came a deepened sense that God is concerned, not alone with man’s soul and his eternal destiny, but with his life here and what happens to him in this world. I suppose I had known these things before, but one day they hit me with tremendous force. I may say that I think this theologically sound, and a natural inference from the Incarnation, when God took upon him our flesh “and was made man.” This means that fields like business and politics are not outside the Church, not parallel to the Church, not enemies of the Church: but that unless religion gets into these fields, two things happen. Business and politics get rottener and rottener; but religion itself gets rarer and rarer. I don’t know which suffers more. They were meant to go together, like soul and body.

Let me give you a few quotations from men who are wiser than I, that enforce this point. Dr. Jacques Maritain, the great French philosopher and statesman, says, “The consciousness of the rights of the person has its origin in the conception of man and of the natural law established by centuries of Christian philosophy.” Prof. William A. Orton of Yale said, “It is only in the Christian doctrine of man that we can find a firm and reasoned ground for the American affirmation.” Said G. K. Chesterton, “There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.” And T. S. Eliot points the issue that is before us in his words, “The term democracy does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces that you dislike—it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and he is a jealous God) you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.”

Before we look for an alternative to Christianity which is to give us our world-view and basic life-concepts, we had better take stock of what are the forces that have brought us even so far as we have come. We forget that the fundamental liberality of mind that searches for better ways, and the values by which we must judge of what constitutes a ‘better way,’ are due to the Christian heritage. Dr. Theodore O. Wedel has said that “man, as the secular world know’s him, is still Christian man, the product of two thousand years of Christian nurture. He is man with the moral conscience of the Christian centuries in his heart. Modern education … frequently continues to take this background for granted.”

Perhaps the finest statement of the dependence of civilization as we know it upon the Christian faith is in a quotation which I am told comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson—I cut it years ago from a magazine called The Continent, before I had learned to mark page and author! It goes this way:

The worst kind of religion is no religion at all, and these men, living in ease and luxury, indulging themselves in the amusement of going without a religion, may be thankful that they live in lands where the gospel they neglect has tamed the beastiliness and ferocity of the men who, but for Christianity, might long ago have eaten their carcasses like the South Sea Islanders, or cut off their heads, and tanned their hides, like the monsters of the French Revolution. When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society, and has found a place on this planet ten miles square where a man may live in decency, comfort and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted—a place where age is reverenced, infancy respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard—when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe where the gospel has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and ventilate their views.

Christianity And The Nation

We have a problem, however, in forcing this obvious truth and its consequences on anybody. James Bryce said of America that “Christianity is in fact understood to be, though not the legally established religion, yet the national religion.” And Supreme Court Justice Douglas said, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” Yet we have wisely resisted the temptation to pass any statutes which make all this too binding. We believe in the separation of Church and State, not because the State is sufficient of itself to produce good citizens, and not because it does not need the constant infusion into its corporate life of sound, informed, God-fearing people, but because this need is better served by a church and government that function separately.

Not long ago a man wrote me saying he thought there should be an article in the Constitution saying that this is a Christian nation. I wrote him that I thought this would lead to very grave and serious divisions and difficulties in our midst. Part of Christianity is an extraordinary liberalism which lets other people think and believe as they will. I think this reflects the liberalism of God himself, who “sends his rain on the just and on the unjust,” and who lets the wheat and the tares grow together until the harvest. The only way for America to become Christian is by the conversion of many more millions of its people to Christ, rather than by saying that it is Christian by an act of Congress, which would at best be only a projection of an intention, not the description of a fact. Only a true and free Christianity dares to encourage genuine freedom of uncoerced thought.

The Peril Of Lethargy

There is another reason for the separation of Church and State. Power corrupts; no power corrupts more quickly than political power. States have to act very often in behalf of the people, and their very size gives them a terrible advantage over individuals or even great aggregates of them combined together. Says Barbara Ward, in Faith and Freedom (p. 265), “The state is by nature so powerful and compelling and voracious an institution that the citizen, standing alone against it, is all but powerless. He needs counter-institutions, above all the counter-institution of the Church, which of all organized bodies alone can look Caesar in the face and claim a higher loyalty.”

Now it seems to me that freedom, like faith, requires a kind of passion. Indeed, it almost is a form of passion. Whenever you say the word, there lies before your mind, not only the picture of the relatively few in the course of human history who have enjoyed freedom, but the many, many millions more who have not enjoyed it, and do not enjoy it today. We say the word, not alone in thanks for what we know, but in prayer for what they ought to have. And if we are any good, we are willing to ‘hurl our lives after our prayers.’ It seems to me that the free world today is in danger, not only through hostility from without, but from a kind of thanklessness and lethargy within. We have seen irresponsible freedom turn men soggy. So some turn to governmental or other clamps upon them to restrain them, forgetful that the real effect of freedom will be towards a responsible use of it, when you value that freedom and know how easily it can be lost by abuse.

John Stuart Mill reminded us that those who inherit a creed without having to pay a price for it never have the fervor nor deep understanding of those who have struggled for what they prize. We need, then, a revival of belief in freedom, not of the French Revolution variety, but of the Christian variety; which, being held as steward under God, demands of us responsible and unselfish use. I do not see how you can ever have much of a revival of faith in freedom unless you precede it by a revival of faith in God. Democracy—we must always remember—has no ideology but faith in God. The Christian religion, aiming primarily at man’s redemption from thralldom to this world, and the salvation of his immortal soul, has done more to lift and purify the common life of this world than all other forces put together. The cultivation of a deep personal spiritual life in our people may yet be the greatest contribution we can make to the life of our nation, provided we keep people mindful that you can never keep a deep personal religion to yourself just for your own comfort.

The Poor And The Pagan

There are two things that burn in my heart in these days. One is the plight of the world’s very poor in countries like India and Africa. The other is the spiritual plight of America’s pagans. The first live in an economic slavery which is unnecessary in the light of modern technology, and which can be removed if we care enough to get to them quickly with adequate assistance in a program of self-help. The second live in a thankless plenty, enjoying a prosperity and a freedom which they owe to God, but for which they think they have nobody to thank; and therefore they use these things selfishly and thus help to destroy them. One wants to say to the American pagan what Helmut Thielicke, one of the rising theologians of West Germany, said to a group of students a few weeks ago when discussing the suppression of the Hungarian revolt: “Are we still worth our freedom, we who do nothing but consume freedom instead of producing it?”

As to the world’s poor, we ought to be behind all decent programs of self-help, whether they be from government, or from foundations, or private sources. It will take all of us working together even to begin to meet the problem. But I believe most in the private effort. That is why I do everything I can to support the movement we call “World Neighbors.” It was founded only six years ago to carry technical self-help to the underdeveloped areas. Under the wise leadership of Dr. John Peters, this movement has already reached approximately 3,000,000 people with the surprisingly economical outlay of only $750,000. This is not relief, it is self-help—better means toward health, food, and education. I’d like to see the enthusiasm for World Neighbors spread like a prairie fire across America, giving all our people a chance to have a direct share in this kind of help. It has always been our Christian duty to do it. Now it is also our urgent responsibility as free men to do it, realizing that desperate people will be lured by the false promises of Communism unless they see the simple, brotherly assistance of a Christian West, poured out in a spirit of humility, mindful of the old civilizations to which we go, yet of the need to adapt our help to the actual conditions today.

But the other group is America’s pagans. I believe that we need to keep our religious institutions going, and functioning as effectively as possible. But the mere multiplication of strong churches will not of itself be enough. As there can be a personal religion which is too ‘personal,’ in that it begins and ends with the individual, so there can be a ‘church’ religion that is too much centered in the organized denominational church, and does not reach out to cooperate with other churches and to take on this task of reaching America’s pagans.

The Role Of The Laity

I believe that this will have to be done largely by laymen. I am not abdicating from my job as a minister. I believe that clergy ought to be like coaches in this game, and laymen like players. The coach ideally knows more about the game and its rules than the players, but the fellows that make the scores are the fellows down on the field. We clergy have often been at fault in trying to draw our men into sharing in implementing our own vision of the Church. What we should be doing is to whet their imaginations and help in implementing their vision of witness for Jesus Christ in and through their jobs. The average layman who loves to sing in church “Like a mighty army moves the Church of God,” when he gets downtown moves more like a mouse or an invalid.

We say that religion is a personal matter, and that ends it. Why can’t we be sufficiently on fire with this contagion of faith to make it seem exciting to other people? Religion was never so much in the current conversation as today. If you can’t get started with people about religion today, you never can. Many of us are either so compromised in our commitment to Christ that we feel hypocritical if we say anything about him; or so unfamiliar with genuine Christian experience that we can only argue. Let us ask God to draw us into the stream of his power. Share events, not viewpoints. Talk about things that have happened to you or to other people. When you care about people, and pray for them, doors swing open where you least expect.

Let me suggest to you three simple imperatives: Get Changed. Get Together. Get Going.

Why do we need to ‘get changed?’ Many of us are decent, hard-working, God-fearing, church-going people. Isn’t that enough? I can only say that if it were enough, and we were all right as we are, we’d be producing far more than we do. The Christian movement is a trickle in the world when it ought to be a torrent. We may have other kinds of sins as well, but surely our biggest sin is spiritual ineffectiveness—we do not get our faith over to other people. We need to get into the stream of God’s power, so that he can use us.

How can we ‘get together?’ There has always been available for us what is coming greatly into focus these days, and that is the small group gathered for the sharing of spiritual experiences, for prayer, and for action. Chad Walsh has called these gatherings the missing link between public worship and the private spiritual life of believers. We need such a link. It is not enough to go to church, and it is not enough to say our private prayers, though we need both. We need small groups where we can learn, not Christian truth only, but the facts and means of Christian experience; where we can air our difficulties and hear the answers others have found; where we can share both our failures and our victories; and where we can grow and find more power.

The ecumenical movement is a fine thing, but thus far it is mostly in the hands of ecclesiastical statesmen. We need a grass-roots ecumenicity. And I suggest that the most available, the most practical kind of grass-roots ecumenicity is a group of men from different churches sitting down together for the exchange of experience, prayer and fellowship. Such cell-groups have one great advantage: if they peter out (as all human things do sometimes), you can discard them when they have served their purpose; which is more than can be said for a dead parish organization! I have seen people grow more in a matter of weeks when exposed to such groups than they have grown in an equal number of years of ordinary churchgoing. The churches need to provide for groups like this, and the seminaries need to teach men how to instigate and lead them till the laymen can take over the leadership themselves.

How do we get going? When you get up in the morning, ask God to use you that day. Keep praying. Keep giving yourself to people. Keep watching for opportunities. It appears to me that wherever one sees awakening today, it is characterized by deeper personal dedication to Christ and an extension of one’s own conversion into deeper areas, by the forming of small groups for the exchange of experience and prayer, and the help to one another of fellowship, and by the witness through life and word of dynamic faith which changes people and situations. Let us remember that God does this, not we. All we have to do is to get connected up with his grace and power.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh and author of numerous books. He has a vigorous interest in Faith at Work, a lay movement which originated in his former parish in New York City, Calvary Church, and publishes a monthly magazine. A book recently published by Hawthorn carries the same title Faith at Work and gathers together significant articles from past issues of the magazine. Dr. Shoemaker’s article above is an abridgment of a recent anniversary address to members of Faith at Work movement.

The well-known communistic leader in France, Maurice Thorez, once summarized his view about communist morale to the effect that it was superior to any other. This morale inspired obedience unto death without any need of reward in heaven (which has no existence for the communist). “This is,” he added, “the most perfect proof of the disinterestedness of this morale. Our heroes know that they fling themselves into the abyss of nothingness.…”

Here we meet a form of heroic that wants to clear morale of all additional factors: no promise of a “fantastic” heavenly reward, only the calling to be executed blindly. This heroic is not new. Often people have preached this “pure” morale, and even declared that only an atheistic morale could be pure. If courageous conduct were connected with belief in God, motivation would be tarnished automatically and good actions would not be performed for their own sake. Many have appealed to Kant and objected against an eudemonistic morale that destroys the ground of morality by means of the motive of salvation.

The question then confronts this atheistic and pure morale as to the ground of its authority—a question that still waits a satisfactory answer. Nevertheless, the expression, “superior” morale, remains in use. The problem of law without lawmaker is transformed into the statement of the pure morale. But how suspicious is this morale where it falls back upon an uncontrollable call! How often we have seen this heroic lead towards destruction of life and on a road of blood and tears. The sources of this morale—if faith is rejected—must be sought elsewhere, and then out of itself an autonomous morality comes into sight. Whether it came from communistic or national socialistic doctrine is not very important. From both parties sacrifices were demanded regardless: blind into the future.

An enormous responsibility reposes on the shoulders of those who preach this heroic morale. Often they themselves do not carry this responsibility to the very end, as illustrated in the final days of the second World War when Hitler withdrew from all responsibility of his actions by committing suicide. In a horrible show, all superiority was buried; nevertheless, many young men went to meet the dark future, singing. And Thorez conveys the idea of the journey to nothingness and to the abyss. Obviously, many find it difficult to see through this “superiority.” They listen to this language that demands their sacrifice for culture, for nation, or for the brotherhood of all people, and under the suggestion of their leaders they sacrifice themselves without any thought of gain.

One must bear in mind that Christian morale is also beset by many dangers. How often something is declared to be Christian morality that turns out to be nothing but pure egoism. He who desires to fight the pure morale of Communism must not do so from the ground of an egoistic morale. Men cannot throw out the devil by the chief of devils. For this reason it is difficult to fight this “pure” morale. If in our obedience we are motivated only by our own welfare and salvation and not the glory of God and his kingdom, then we do not have the right to protest against the “pure” morale. It is not accidental that we are forewarned in the Old Testament by the incident where Satan accuses Job of being obedient and serving God for his own well-being. God thought this accusation serious enough to deliver Job into the hidden hands of Satan. The issue was fought out to the very last breath of Job’s life to see whether he was only after God’s blessing or in this blessing sought God himself. It was Satan who made an egoistic morale out of obedience, and that charge could be denied only by the realism of Job’s life.

In the struggle and trouble of this life we truly recognize something other than selfishness in piety and morality. Our answer to the communistic “pure” morale without prospect of reward can only be a complete surrender to the God of our life, and it will be apparent in this surrender that our obedience shall differ from egoism. The Holy Scripture speaks very clearly about reward and a blessed future. Obviously this need not be concealed and God holds out to us a new heaven and a new earth, lovely beyond description. God provides that we do not become egoists but rather children and manifest our likeness to the Father. He delivers us from the confinement of egoism and relates us to our neighbor that we may learn that he who loves his neighbor fulfills the law. And when nations are assembled before God’s throne (Matt. 25) judgments will be rendered on the basis of one cup of cold water. The Bible is far more charitable than the communistic morale, but just because of this the Word of God is more in earnest. It talks about grace and judgment, about reward and punishment; nevertheless, along this road to the future, life is renewed completely in service to God and neighbor. The commandment of God transcends the contradiction between egoism and disinterested piety and indicates a road on which all life is blessed.

He who fully rejects the communistic pure morale must pay special attention to the principle of “the cup of cold water” and to the commandment, “love your neighbor.” He who cuts the second commandment from the first, or the first from the second, has no real resistance against this heroic morale. He ends up with an inferior morality that is detrimental to the neighbor. It is no accident that one of the longest parables in the New Testament concerns the charitable Samaritan. Not the prospect of reward (the great reward) beclouds the morale but rather the misunderstanding of the command of God that he who seeks life for himself also seeks life for others. Egoism is now once and for all the perfect counterpart of man as the image of God—the man, who resembles the Father, is moved by what Paul terms “love of mankind” (Titus 3:4).

It would truly be sad, if in reaction to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the merit of good works, we would pay scant attention to the teachings of Holy Scripture concerning reward. The Scripture clearly mentions reward and even judgments concerning works. But we must understand reward correctly. We are not allowed to become Christian egoists, and the judgment of God is upon all who forget the second commandment is “like unto the first.”

Herein is the touchstone of the Christian community, its true Christian life on the earth: the imitation of God. Herein only does her light shine before men (Matt. 5:16). Christ does not hesitate to speak about her light. But all misunderstanding is excluded as he warns that community with his unforgettable word: “Let your light so shine before men [there is no hidden Christianity] that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

“Testament Of Faith”

A Testament of Faith, by G. Bromley Oxnam, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1958. 176 pp., $3.00.

The importance of this confession of faith is due primarily not to the depth or uniqueness of its contents (there is no reason for believing that any of these paragraphs or pages will be quoted in significant Christian literature during the years to come), but to the pre-eminent position which the author of this book has held in ecclesiastical circles during the last 20 years. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam is now 67 years of age, and has been an ordained minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church for 42 years. Probably no other one ecclesiastic in America has held as many important positions within his own denomination, and in ecumenical movements, as Bishop Oxnam. Twenty years ago he began serving a five-year term as chairman of the Division of Educational Institutions for the Board of Education of the Methodist Episcopal Church; from 1940 to 1948, in the same great denomination, he was chairman of the Committee on Public Information; while for eight years, 1944–1957, he was president of its Division of Foreign Missions. How strange that such a large denomination should allow one man to simultaneously take the chairmanships of so many vital committees. For many years, he was also chairman of the Methodist Committee on Chaplains. Bishop Oxnam, at the present time, is on the Board of Trustees of at least seven educational institutions and is the president of the Board of Trustees of Westminster Theological Seminary. He was a professor in the University of Southern California and in the Boston University School of Theology for 10 years, and president of DePauw University for eight years. He has been a bishop in the Methodist church since 1936 and is today the president of the Council of Bishops. In addition to the highest possible offices in his own denomination, he was president of the Federal Council of Churches from 1944 to 1946, and president of the World Council of Churches, 1948–1954. What this man believes, and has believed, and taught, and preached, and insisted upon in his chairmanships of these strategic committees and organizations, is a very important matter.

On the very first page of the introduction, the Bishop warns us that we must expect many negations of basic Christian truths, as we peruse his testament of faith, when he tells us “there is much in the differing formulations of the faith that I cannot in honesty reconcile with what I believe to be the character of God and the mind of Christ.” More than once as he proceeds from chapter to chapter, he speaks slightingly of creeds, and yet, the titles of all of his chapters are hardly anything else but phrases from the Apostle’s Creed: “I Believe in God,” “I Believe in Jesus Christ,” “I Believe in the Forgiveness of Sins,” etc., though the title of the last chapter is not in any Apostolic Creed, “I Believe in Man.” In his chapter on the Church, he admits that “theological discussion is difficult for the average layman and average minister to understand, but understand it we must” (p. 128). And yet, again and again, he insists that he is no theologian. “I have met many theologians and have listened to their lectures with respectful attention. I have labored through their heavy volumes. I must admit regretfully that I still see through a glass darkly. Their discussions in ecumenical conferences confuse me. I know I must be at fault. These are learned men. I am sure that theology involves technical jargon just as physics, biology, and chemistry do. Theologians deal with ultimate questions” (p. 4). Soon after this he frankly states “I am not a theologian. That will soon be evident.” What a paradox for a man, once to have been a professor of practical theology, the president of the board of trustees of a theological seminary, a lecturer on “preaching” and many other religious subjects in various universities, a bishop in the Methodist church, and not to be a theologian!

His repudiation of many biblical teachings seems to have begun at an early age in the heart and mind of one who was destined to become such an influence in ecclesiastical circles in this country. He was brought up in a devout home, but he says that even then as a boy, to him, “saying prayers was more like telling beads … I doubted … in our home the Scriptures were the inspired Word of God and the Old Testament stories were a record of what God had actually done. It is hard for a boy to understand how God could be a God of love and still slay little children.” (If the Bishop is referring to the event recorded in 2 Kings 2, he has failed to note that it does not say these children were slain.) Even when studying systematic theology as a seminary student, he says of the attributes of God, that he had to admit them but “they did not add up to the Being I needed and who I believed must exist.”

In his first paragraph, “I Believe in God,” he returns to the quotation which has brought justified strong criticism upon him, when he favorably quotes another author, that the God of the Old Testament is “a dirty bully,” and he defends this. He refuses to believe “that God as revealed in Jesus could tell us that it was better that a millstone were hanged about a man’s neck than to offend little children … that such a God would have slain the innocent first-born of the Egyptians.”

Here we have the basic flaw in Oxnam’s theology. He rejects anything in the Word of God which does not fit in with his now completed theological system. He picks and chooses. Thus he tells us that he can understand the Beatitudes of Jesus, the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the story of the Prodigal Son, but he does not choose to refer to the words of the same Christ, “This is my blood which is shed for the remission of sins.” He does not dare to quote Christ’s words, “No man cometh unto the Father but by me.” He quotes over and over and over again that glorious conclusion to the eighth chapter of Romans, that nothing can separate us from the love of God. And then he states that “God for us cannot be thought of as an angry, awful, avenging being.” Here he forgets to tell us, in fact he knows this but does not want to admit, that this same epistle of Paul to the Romans that gives him this great passage on God’s love for his own, refers to the wrath of God more often than to the love of God. If Paul is right in his statement concerning God’s love to us, on what grounds can we insist that Paul is woefully wrong when he writes about the wrath of God?

Like many other religious writers who have repudiated the great essentials of the Christian faith, the Bishop gives extended notice to our Lord’s famous words, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” But as is invariably the case, he does not inform us that this is only the concluding clause in a sentence which expresses a truth that he would repudiate. This is the entire sentence. “If ye abide in my word, then are ye truly my disciples; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

In the chapter, “I Believe in Life Everlasting,” he does not even mention the fact that Christ rose from the dead or that there is such a thing as resurrection for Christians, though this is the blessed hope in the New Testament. Though he does not choose to refer to one line of the New Testament on the resurrection, he opens his chapter with four lines from Omar Khayyam. Once he quotes from the glorious 15th chapter of I Corinthians and who would ever guess what the single sentence was? “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

It is, however, in his chapter on Jesus Christ that we are confronted with the most tragic aspects of this tragic book. Regarding the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and making the Bible say what it does not say, he affirms: “It is offensive to me to assume that there is something sinful in the love act that results in procreation. The doctrine assumes that Jesus was conceived without sin and this means without a human father. I refuse to believe that there is sin in the form of conception that God Himself has ordained for humanity.” He speaks of “the idea of virgin birth so prevalent in centuries gone by” (p. 34).

The most shocking words of all are in his statements regarding our Lord’s holy death. No comment is necessary on these words. “I have never been able to carry the idea of justice to the place where someone else can vicariously pay for what I have done in order to clean the slate” (p. 38). “They argue that God sent His own Son who died upon the cross and in so doing, satisfies God’s sense of legislative justice. It simply does not make sense to me. It is rather an offense. It offends my moral sense” (p. 41). “Must God have a sacrifice, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, as the Book says? No, no, I cannot think of it this way” (p. 42). And what is the Bishop going to do with his sins, and he acknowledges he is a sinner. He tells us, “I cannot see forgiveness as predicated upon the act of someone else. It is my sin. I must atone” (p. 144).

The Bishop says on the first page of his book, “I have often wondered what Jesus would think and do if He were to sit in some church councils or ecumenical assemblies in which the major churches of the world meet to consider such questions as faith and order, life and work.” Much later in the book, he makes a similar statement, “I wonder what Jesus would think of a theological debate in which His nature was under discussion.” Well, we don’t have to surmise in a matter like this. Jesus never asked anyone what they thought of the story of the Prodigal Son, but he did ask “Whom do ye say that I am?” and when the answer came, “Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God,” he confirmed the confession and attributed its inspiration to God himself. This story-telling, love-revealing, gracious Saviour also said, “He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Some day the Bishop will know, before the judgment seat of Christ, what Christ thinks of “theological discussions.”

What can be done when one, with all these ecclesiastical offices in his hands, plus the headship of a College of Bishops for 8½ million people, boldly denies what the Word of God declares, and what the Church of Christ has always claimed to be truth and what his own church, since the days of Wesley, has reaffirmed as truth in her doctrinal standards? Are there not enough born-again Methodists in America with courage enough to stand up in Methodist conferences, and boldly repudiate these false doctrines? What has happened to the voice of true Bible-believing bishops in the Methodist church in an hour like this? Are they saying nothing to the head of the College of Bishops? In all the Methodist theological seminaries in this country, are there not some theologians left who will print, over their names, with all the influence their chairs give them, a strong reaffirmation of those Christian truths by which alone men are born again and given the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ, God’s Son?

WILBUR M. SMITH

Optimism To Pessimism

After Utopia: The Decline of Political Faith, by Judith N. Shklar, Princeton Univ., 1957. $5.00.

This is a stimulating but rather depressing book. The scholarship which has gone into its composition is extensive and the critical approach is extremely valuable, since many ideas, basic to modern political thinking, are shown in their true historical light. For the Christian who wishes to gain some understanding of current political ideologies it is a very useful guide. But at the same time it shows quite clearly that the West has gradually seen a decline of political faith from eighteenth century rationalistic optimism to twentieth century existentialist pessimism. And what is worse, it offers nothing in its place.

Dr. Shklar, presently a teacher in political science at Harvard, traces three main lines of the decline of political faith. The larger portion of the book is devoted to the fate of romantic optimism which she shows has gradually moved away from a faith in man’s emotions to direct society, through a belief in the incompatibility of the individual and his social environment, to existentialist despair and anguish. This is, to the reviewer, the most interesting part of the work.

From romanticism she next turns to Christianity whose principle representatives she seems to feel are Maritain, Knox, Dawson, T. S. Eliot and Brunner. Pointing out that Christianity has always been critical of society, the author believes that modern Christians have adopted a fatalistic attitude by holding to the view that political action results primarily from religious belief, and since the West has lost its Christianity it has lost ipso facto all political hope. It therefore has no counter-offer to make to romanticism.

Finally she closes by showing that radicalism has also lost its political dreams by becoming scientific and as a result suspicious of all romantics and rationalists. The result has been the radicals’ political disintegration.

While one must confess that there is much to be said for this work, in that it points up the ultimate conclusion of eighteenth century Rationalism, one cannot but feel that it has two important lacunae. The first is that much of the Enlightenment’s political thinking was not original, but was taken from the Reformation without its Christian foundation. The second is that the author has completely ignored the political views of evangelical Christians. She has apparently never heard, for instance, of Abraham Kuiper, Herman Dooyeweerd and others of the Dutch school of thought. Thus she fails to realize that while the Christian never can be optimistic about sinful human beings in themselves, he does have faith in the grace of God, who from outside history can bring about political changes through a revolution in the hearts of men.

This book is a challenge in this crucial hour for Christians to think and write in political terms in order that men may see that the truly Christian view is not fatalistic, but one which calls for responsible political action.

W. STANFORD REID

Objective Of Church

The Witnessing Community, by Suzanne de Dietrich, Westminster, Philadelphia, 1958, 180 pp., $3.75.

Miss Suzanne de Dietrich, a prominent French “lay theologian,” correctly affirms that the supreme task of the Church is to reconcile the world to God. Believing that we live under the same tensions as God’s people of old in that we are ever tempted to either “withdraw from” or “conform to” the world, she traces the history of mankind from Genesis through Israel and the Apostles in order to show the relevancy of the biblical record for the attainment of this objective of the Church.

Interestingly and well-written, profound yet easy to read, much of this book will commend itself to evangelicals as being pertinent to a “witnessing community.” However, despite a constant use of Scripture to document her position, this is not a sound book from the standpoint of biblical Christianity. Considering the Bible a mixture of “saga and history,” a combination of the “human” and the “divine,” for her the Scriptures become, rather than are, the Word of God. Her Christological views, although usually couched in orthodox nomenclature, are often hazy and we search in vain for any adequate conception of sin and the need of repentance.

Miss de Dietrich is active in ecumenical circles but her book at least raises doubts as to whether the unity she desires would be a unity in the Christ of Paul and the Apostles.

CHARLES H. CRAIG

Roman Catholic View

Communism and Christianity, by Martin D’Arcy. Devin Adair, 1957. 242 pp. $4.00.

Philosophers, economists, political scientists and theologians of past centuries and today “strut their stuff” on the pages of Communism and Christianity, as the author, an Oxford-trained philosopher and Oxford professor, calls upon them to support his Roman Catholic view of the war between the opposing ideologies. The book does not bear an official imprimatur, nor is there effort on the part of the writer to present his findings as the Catholic position.

Written with charming diction and sturdy logic, the book is as intriguing as it is informative. One of its chief values, particularly to those readers who have not studied the works of all the philosophers, is the author’s succinct but accurate “boil downs” of the principal theses of the great thinkers of the world, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Hegel and Fauerbach, with Britain’s Prof. J. Macmurray tossed in for good measure. Also quoted are Ricardo and Adam Smith; Protestant writers, Paul Tillich and Dwight J. Bradley, the more secular Aldous Huxley and Whittaker Chambers—these and others.

As an example of the writer’s skill in “pointing up” a position or philosophy, he declares that “Rousseau’s ultimate is the sovereign people.” Only six words, but a world of meaning.

If the book attracts even a modicum of readers it will stir considerable controversy. Many libertarians will reject the author’s conclusion that communists are motivated by the same humanitarian desires which lead Christians to undertake charitable projects. The author’s position in this regard is made plain in many passages, as for example:

“What Christianity and Communism have to offer are then as different as heaven from earth, and it would appear that they must meet in a head-on collision; and yet they are both concerned with the welfare of man and can look as if they were brothers. The reason for this likeness may lie in the subconscious ideals which inspire the finest communist supporters.”

In still another respect the book falls short. It presents a middle-of-the-road philosophy. The author will settle for a mixed society, as is clear from these quoted lines: “The state should act on the long range ideal of redistributing property so that the individual is capable of enjoying it and using it to the general interest. In a sense quite different from that of the classless society of Marx the interference of the state should diminish the more the members of it grow in wisdom and in fellowship.” The sentiments in this quotation do not sound too much unlike Marxian writings.

VERNE P. KAUB

Orthodox Acceptance

The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, by J. P. Lange, Zondervan, 1958. Two volumes, 1048 pp., $3.95 per vol.

This is another Zondervan reprint by an author who needs no introduction. It is in four volumes but only the first two are reviewed here. Part of volume 1 deals with the literary sources about the life of Christ and related critical questions. The rest, and all of volume 2, exhibit Christ’s life from birth to his last week on earth. This masterful section is a combination of commentary, harmony, chronology, devotion, critical and homiletical material. This is an excellent set for minister, student and seminary library.

KENNETH MCCOWAN

NEWS

Christianity in the World Today

Some 12,000 Southern Baptists, representing the South’s largest Christian body, converged on air-conditioned Houston, Texas, May 20–23, for their annual convention. Famed for a rapidity of growth both foreign and amazing to many denominations, the Southern Baptist “messengers”—not “delegates,” in keeping with Baptist church government autonomy—were exhorted to advance yet further and faster. If, in taking their good news from the South to Ghent, Rio, Calabar, and Chicago, they felt any inclination to slow to a canter, ample spurring was provided by inspirational messages portraying the staggering needs of the world.

Bugles were heard morning, afternoon and evening in the form of outstanding oratory and moving pageantry. The assault upon ear-gate and eye-gate was reminiscent of The Holy War, by a great Baptist of another century. One is inclined to read a Southern Baptist invasion of a city in terms of a great religious festival and feels that the legions of Lucifer must surely be overwhelmed by the sheer weight of numbers. There is a sweeping momentum which knows no trumpet of retreat.

Rate Of Growth Unparalleled

The Southern Baptists, coming from humble and predominantly rural beginnings, have grown big and rich. At present constituting the second largest Protestant denomination, numbering close to 9 million, they heard themselves described as the fastest-expanding of them all, with every prospect of an accelerated pace in the future. They learned from their executive committee that convention assets as of December 31 were $164,422,978, an increase of $15,000,000 over the previous year. Then they adopted a budget of $17,500,000 for 1959, this representing an increase of $1,000,000 over 1958. They listened to a telegram from President Eisenhower describing them as “a most constructive force in the life of our people.”

It is particularly when one looks at the Southern Baptist home mission program that he is somehow reminded of the bursting expansiveness of America’s frontier days. There are now more than 31,000 Southern Baptist churches. A movement has been launched to establish 30,000 new churches or missions between 1959 and 1964. That this is more than an idle dream is indicated by the recent record.

In 1940, Southern Baptists served 19 states as against 43 today. In 18 years their territory has increased by three times and its population by three and one-fourth. A convention was organized in California in 1940 with 13 churches. This number has jumped to 642. In Kansas there were seven churches in 1946. Now there are 135. Since 1948 10 churches in the Washington-Oregon Convention have mushroomed to 143. Ohio’s 40 churches in 1954 have now become 134. Alaska had three Southern Baptist churches in 1946, but now she has 21 churches and 9 missions.

“Southern Baptists,” you say? As a matter of fact, there is talk of name-changing to something more realistic. Indeed, one of the convention debates was concerning the role to be played in Canada. The vote revealed the messengers to be in favor of giving aid to any Baptist church or churches in Canada but opposed to seeking alignment of any of these with the Southern Baptist Convention, fearing impairment of relations with other Baptist bodies.

Vacuum In The American North

But no such reservations mark the advance northward of Southern Baptists in the United States. They have heard a Macedonian call, though assuredly this was not uttered by northern Baptists. Southern Baptists declare they are not seeking competition but rather are stepping into a vacuum, particularly in the midst of the large cities where Protestantism has so often defaulted. Many Christians will surely rejoice if Southern Baptists, with their great resources—spiritual and material—are able to counteract the growing paganism of the large metropolitan areas of the North.

Their strong emphasis upon evangelism is well-known. Famed pulpit orator Dr. Robert G. Lee of Memphis moved the vast Coliseum audience with his plea for “making disciples by righteous living,” pointing to the 30 million youth in this country with no religious affiliation.

Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, in stirring fashion warned that “America can be lost. And if America is lost to the evangelical faith, the world is lost.” Cruel as are her external enemies, he contended, America’s worst enemies are on the inside, such as drunkenness, materialism, and debauchery. He called for revival and evangelization of the uncommitted multitudes, reminding his listeners that Baptist-founded Providence and Rhode Island are now the most solidly Roman Catholic city and state in the union. “It is a stark fact of history,” he cried, “that men are lost without God. Before tomorrow’s dawn, 130,000 people will face God’s judgment.”

Southern Baptists do not make headlines for the development of new doctrines, but the success with which they apply the old ones is startling to many. Dr. Theodore F. Adams, widely-known president of the Baptist World Alliance, explained the presence of Baptists in Russia where there are few other Protestants, by saying simply, “Baptists are people of the Book.”

The “Convention Preacher,” Dr. Robert E. Naylor, named the Bible “the heartbeat of the denomination.” Preaching on sin, he said, “We have been putting on poultices when the world needs a blood transfusion.”

Another sign of the northward advance of the Southern Baptists is the location of two of their most recently-established seminaries. Midwestern Baptist Seminary opens this autumn—in Kansas City, Missouri. Golden Gate Seminary in San Francisco opened in 1944. Its president, Dr. Harold K. Graves, said the current Billy Graham Crusade had already moved forward local Baptist work a decade.

Votes, Future Sites

The Southern Baptist Convention re-elected Democratic Representative Brooks Hays of Arkansas as its president.

Dr. Chester L. Quarles, executive secretary of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, was elected first vice president; Dr. Archie Ellis, pastor of the First Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina, was elected second vice president.

Other re-elections included James W. Merritt, of Gainesville, Georgia, senior secretary; Joe W. Burton, editor of the Baptist Home Life Magazine, secretary; and Porter Routh, executive secretary of the convention’s Executive Committee, treasurer.

Next year the convention will be held in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1960 it is scheduled for Miami and in 1961 the “messengers” will meet in St. Louis.

But the Southern Baptists’ vision penetrates beyond the cities of the North. For the better part of an evening the foreign mission challenge was made strongly to the messengers. The Rev. James D. Belote of Hong Kong spoke of a “Sin Curtain” separating men from God. Given the degree of sacrifices many communists are making for their cause, he envisioned a Christian missionary advance “as yet undreamed of.”

Foreign Mission Board Executive Secretary Baker J. Cauthen expressed gratitude for the 1200 missionaries on the field but called for double that number, saying that the time had come for a new rocket-like thrust. He then led in a 20-minute prayer service.

An international vision was the burden of many of the remarks of Congressman Brooks Hays, who was re-elected president of the convention for the customary second term. He called election to this office the greatest honor he had ever received, noting he had learned his first lessons on democracy in a Baptist church as a lad. He told of his recent trip to the Soviet Union and of his speaking in a Baptist church in Moscow, where he contradicted to the congregation Marx’s axiom that religion is the opiate of the people.

Calling for “open doors” between America and Russia, the congressman declared his hope for “massive reconciliation” (this not compromising determent through arms) through “heart power, a passionate concern for humanity.” Toward this end he led in setting up a nine-man committee, including himself and Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, to explore ways in which Southern Baptists can contribute to the promotion of world peace through “Christian love and the application of Christian principles to human affairs.” The international organization and contacts available through the Foreign Mission Board would be at the disposal of the committee.

The few road blocks in the way of the convention’s sweeping advance were quickly vaulted. The specter, by now painfully familiar, of integration-segregation controversy made its appearance. Adams had challenged the ministers in plain terms, pointing out the anomalous situation which found mission field converts unwelcome in the churches which had set out to convert them. Hays had supported the convention’s Christian Life Commission, saying, “It would be tragic for us to assume that we can function as a Christian body without assigning to trusted representatives of the convention the task of pointing out our Christian duty with respect to social evils and current conflicts.” Not only had the commission spoken out against obscene literature and alcoholic beverages, but it had also said that each citizen should “help and not hinder the progress of justice for all peoples.” Furthermore, “he must challenge the threat to the public school system” and also seek the “restoration of communication and fellowship with people of every race and nationality.”

Up rose the Rev. Montague Cook of Georgia who quoted Webster in seeking to demonstrate that “fellowship” is synonymous with “integration.” He held that the report should not be received until the local churches had expressed themselves, for newspapers might give the public the idea that the convention favored integration. Hays pointed out that no local church was bound by the report, and the vote was subsequently heavily in favor of receiving it.

A motion was later made that the commission return a grant of $15,000 from the Ford Foundation through the Fund for the Republic, on grounds of a purported congressional investigation. The motion was defeated by a large majority.

Newsmen sat up late one night in a hotel lobby awaiting an important verdict by the trustees of Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. Thirteen faculty members had threatened to resign over what they claimed was arbitrary control of the school’s program on the part of the administration. A party close to the situation claimed that the president, Dr. Duke K. McCall, believed the seminary should reflect the views of the denomination, while the dissidents felt the seminary should be at liberty to lead the denomination. The verdict, when it finally came after long deliberation, was unambiguous. The trustees came down solidly on the side of the president. The next move belonged to the dissenters.

One of the more important items of convention business was consideration of the report of the Survey Committee. Significance lessened, however, when some of the key items were returned for a further year’s study. The aim of the recommendations was said to be a slight structural tightening for the better co-ordination of the convention’s many activities. However, the sections dealing with the powerful Home Mission Board, which were deferred a year, would have transferred power from the board to the state conventions.

In effect, the Southern Baptists stand as an island of resistance in a great sea of increasing centralization in any and all areas of life. The Rev. Ralph Herring, while pointing out that certain missionary and other needs are such as to require more than the ability of a local body of believers, emphasized that the local body always has “prior claim” upon its members’ loyalties.

Thus, Southern Baptists affirm that the autonomy of each local church is a “major factor” in their not being a part of the National or World Council of Churches. The convention simply cannot commit its cooperating churches in such a matter.

The convention has been criticized for its size and crowded agenda, and thus its “machine-like efficiency,” with most of the business being handled by committees. It is at present undergoing self-examination on these matters.

Cooperation of Southern Baptists with other Baptists is seen in its very active participation in the Baptist World Alliance, in the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs in Washington, D. C., and in a six-year program of preparation for the Baptist Jubilee of 1964.

Dr. Clarence W. Cranford, president of the American Baptist Convention and a member of the Southern Baptist Convention as well, addressed the Houston convention on the spiritual tie which binds all Baptists.

Another area of cooperation among 20 million Baptists in seven major North American bodies is a program of national revival centering about the Southern Baptist television series—the cooperative program to be called “Televangelism.”

As the convention rolled toward its conclusion, messengers discovered yet more achievements and heard yet more challenges. A two-volume Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists had been published earlier in the year. The Chaplains Commission reported that all active duty quotas in all branches of the services had been filled. The Sunday School Board announced that it had grossed over 23 million dollars in 1957. Its headquarters are in Nashville, a city second only to Washington, D. C. in the amount of second class mail handled. The biggest customers are the Baptists.

Adams said, “Atomic power is nothing compared to the power exploded from Calvary.” The Rev. Mr. Herring said, “We are here with the resources of the Gospel to make of the barriers of this world bridges over which Christ may enter the hearts of men.” A Texas voice said, “Tomorrow is a big day.”

A bugle was heard. And it was not taps.

F. F.

A Barber’S Witness

All was not violence during Vice President Richard M. Nixon’s trip to South America.

In Quito, Ecuador, diplomat Nixon seized an opportunity for making a contact with the common people by stopping in a barber shop for a haircut. The barber, as it happened, was an enthusiastic Protestant believer.

In the course of the ensuing conversation, carried on through an interpreter, the barber pulled a Spanish New Testament from his pocket and requested the vice president’s autograph. Nixon complied in a very cordial manner and listened with interest while the barber gave testimony to his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

A. V. D. P.

Praying For The French

A Methodist prayer leader was appealing to colleagues in 112 countries to conduct urgent intercessions for French crises.

The request came from Dr. Thomas A. Carruth, director of the World-Wide Prayer Movement of the Methodist General Board of Evangelism, who said his action was prompted by word from Dr. J. E.P. Edwards, American Protestant pastor in Paris.

An evangelistic campaign was being held in Paris even as reports of threatened revolution continued. Edwards’ letter said: “Many prayer groups have sprung up in the most unexpected places in France, and more and more our people are praying with urgency, realizing that only divine intervention can save this wonderful country from the perils of religious counterfeit and the stranglehold of materialism.”

U. P. Centennial

In Pittsburgh, more than 10,000 persons joined in a dramatic observance of the centennial of the United Presbyterian Church of North America, May 23–25.

Pageants, tours, and special services marked the event which came on the eve of the church’s merger with the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. A.

The new church will be known as the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.

The centennial pageant, “Prologue to Tomorrow,” was held in Syria Mosque, Pittsburgh’s largest auditorium, and was witnessed by near capacity audiences.

People: Words And Events

Deaths: Dr. Robert G. McCutchan, 80, dean emeritus of DePauw University School of Music and noted hymn compiler, in Claremont, Calif.… Miss Hilda Brown and Miss Mary Woodhouse, both of the Church Missionary Society of London, in a New Delhi plane crash … Dr. Corydon M. Wassell, 74, medical missionary and naval officer, hero of World War II, in Little Rock, Arkansas … Mrs. W. Darst Newhouse, 62, Presbyterian missionary to Cameroun, in New York … Dr. Barnett R. Brickner, Cleveland rabbi and foremost leader of Reform Judaism in the United States, in Spain … Samuel Alphonsus Cardinal Stritch, 70, only American-born prelate elevated to the Roman Catholic governing curia, in Rome.

Elections: As president of Chicago Theological Seminary, Dr. Howard F. Schomer, effective January 1, 1959 … as president of Philadelphia Bible Institute, Dr. Charles Caldwell Ryrie, effective August 1 … as president of the Primitive Methodist Church, the Rev. Richard I. Purnell … as acting dean of Philadelphia Divinity School (Episcopal), Dr. Albert H. Lucas.

Appointments: As professor of New Testament at Harvard Divinity School, Dr. Krister Stendahl … to the pastorate of the Seminole Heights Baptist Church of Tampa, Florida, Dr. John Summerfield Wimbish … to pastorates in the Philadelphia Presbytery, Dr. Walton W. Rankin, former publicity director of the Presbyterian General Assembly, and Richard S. Armstrong, former publicity head of baseball’s Baltimore Orioles … as president of Cornus Hill Bible College, Earl Marcus Jensen … as bishop of the Diocese of Funen in the Lutheran Church of Denmark, the Rev. K. C. Holm … as military representative for international Christian Business Men’s Committee, Colonel Cecil R. Hill … as senior representative in Great Britain of the Lutheran World Federation’s Department of World Service, the Rev. William B. Schaeffer.

Resignation: As head of St. Paul Bible College, Dr. George D. Strohm.

Award: A Fulbright Scholarship to Professor Morton H. Smith, chairman of the Bible Department at Belhaven College. Professor Smith will study for a doctorate at the Free University of Amsterdam, Holland.

Grant: To International Christian University in Japan, $30,000 from the Lilly Endowment, Inc., Indianapolis.

Rebuilding: McCormick Theological Seminary plans to spend $10,000,000 for a new set of buildings.

Statistics: Roman Catholics claim 36,023,977 members in the United States and its territories, according to the Official Catholic Directory for 1958.… Russian Orthodox churches in the Soviet Union now number more than 22,000, while those of other denominations total 18,000, according to a Moscow Radio report.

Digest: Dr. Karl Barth and Dr. Emil Brunner are backing plans for the first international Protestant radio station in Europe, to be built in Switzerland … “Communicating the Gospel world-wide” is the theme of the second World Conference on Missionary Radio scheduled for June 12–14 at Moody Bible Institute, Chicago.… Staffs of the Lutheran World Federation and the Rhenish Mission Society of Germany were continuing work despite rebel activity in Sumatra, according to reports received in Geneva, Switzerland … Circulations of the Congregational Christian Church’s Advance magazine and the Evangelical and Reformed Church’s Messenger will be combined into a new publication to be called United Church Herald. The United Church was formed last June in a merger.…

London’s Central Hall, one of the most famous Methodist churches in the world, appears on a newly-issued United Nations stamp which commemorates the meeting of the first General Assembly there in 1946 … Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip headed an overflow congregation which witnessed the reopening of the east end of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. The building was badly damaged in World War II bombings.

From the bitter struggles of the Covenanters in seventeenth-century Scotland through the General Assembly of 1858 in Pittsburgh which formed the United Presbyterian Church and the General Assembly of 1958, when yet another major union was to be consummated, the pageant traced Presbyterian history.

The play was written by Paul Gamble and directed by the Rev. Kenneth E. Grice. Dozens of persons took part.

Major Work

Leading evangelical scholars are preparing a new exposition of the English Bible in five volumes. Tentatively titled The Living Theme of the Great Book, the major work is scheduled for publication in 1960 by A. J. Holman Company.

Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, editor of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, is listed as consulting editor for the Bible exposition project which will have 65 contributors, among them scholars from Europe, Africa and Australasia. At least a dozen major denominations are represented.

In addition to outlines and expositions of each Bible book, the volumes will contain introductory essays by Wilbur M. Smith, F. F. Bruce, Oswald T. Allis, Andrew W. Blackwood, Everett F. Harrison, Julius R. Mantey, Francis I. Steele, and J. Kenneth Grider.

A Minister’S Return

The Rev. John Gerberding, who resigned as pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church near Milwaukee in 1955 after being acquitted on heresy charges, returned to the ministry last month by taking up the pastorate of the Epiphany Lutheran Church, Denver.

Asked whether his theological views had changed during the last four years, Pastor Gerberding replied, “I do not wish to comment on that.”

A Final Appeal

A church-state issue over the cut-rate sale of land to Fordham University was put in the hands of the United States Supreme Court last month.

A final appeal to the nation’s highest tribunal sought to reverse lower court rulings which refused to recognize the transfer of New York City property as any violation of church-state separation guarantees. Fordham, a Roman Catholic school, agreed to buy the land from the city at a price considerably less than the city paid for it. Plans called for redeveloping the area in New York’s Lincoln Square into campus grounds.

Charges have been made to the effect that transfer of the property under proposed terms would amount to an outright grant to Fordham.

Palace Progress

No one visiting the Cow Palace on a Thursday night could doubt that the Holy Spirit’s greatest work in the San Francisco Bay Cities Crusade is being done with young people. The seed of a new Christian commonwealth is being planted on the West Coast as thousands upon thousands of children of the atomic age continued to stream forward at the Billy Graham mass evangelistic campaign.

Out of the weird nihilism and moral anarchy of the “beat generation” are coming these youthful pilgrims, at the behest of a messenger who dares to liken their environment to that of Sodom and Gomorrah, and points them to the purity of Jesus Christ. The eagerness with which they respond is strangely stirring. A young prostitute telephoned from her brothel for help after a telecast. An eighth-grade girl “stood up” a sneak drinking date with boys the Saturday night after her decision. Duck-tailed young housebreakers and car-stealers are now thumbing painfully through the Gospel of John for the answers to “Lesson One: the Saviour and Eternal Life.”

Crusade momentum was felt in other ways, too. Pastors were astonished as decision cards began to choke their mailboxes. Some were delighted, others discomfited to find their church pillars had been “going forward.” Dr. Gilbert F. Close, pastor of San Francisco’s Portal-hurst Presbyterian Church and a consistent opponent of the campaign, acknowledged that he was “thrilled” when two students at San Francisco State College applied for membership in his church following their decisions. The Rev. Baldwin Sherman of Havenscourt Colonial Church, Oakland, cancelled choir rehearsals and told his people, “You’ll gain more by singing for Cliff Barrows.”

The unique telephone ministry that marked the New York Crusade is proving in San Francisco that it is a valid—if overlooked—arm of the Church. On May 19 it was extended to cover both sides of the bay. The nightly telecast had hardly flashed the new number before all eight lines were ringing and counselors were answering, “Billy Graham Crusade—may I help you?” (One woman replied, “I don’t know whether you can or not; my husband just punched me on the nose and walked out of the house.”) Chairman Don Lehmann, pastor of San Francisco’s Glad Tidings Temple, says that one out of every three calling in is making a clear commitment to Christ, and is being referred to a pastor and followed up. The telephone counselors use a non-directive technique, referring to the Scriptures after first clarifying the inquirer’s thoughts by restating his expressed feelings.

The nation-wide Saturday night telecasts were bringing thousands of letters telling of conversions. Twelve Canadian stations joined the network until virtually every metropolitan area in North America was covered.

On the surface, the city by the Golden Gate seemed its old gay, insouciant self. Police reported no lessening of the crime rate or the number of arrests. Bartenders around the Visitacion Valley area were said to be complaining, but elsewhere “business” was as usual. The city wore no sackcloth, and its only ashes were those of the 1906 earthquake and fire, still piled behind the Cow Palace.

Yet there was no doubt that things were happening. God was at work. San Francisco’s peripheral population is far smaller than either London or New York, yet the Cow Palace is averaging 5,000 per night more than Harringay, and a greater number were coming forward than at Madison Square Garden, according to Crusade Director Walter H. Smyth.

Dr. Graham’s fire and zeal are seeming inexhaustible. He has greatly expanded his ministry to include daytime addresses at the leading seminaries and universities, mass meetings in downtown San Francisco and Oakland, talks to overflow crowds at service clubs where he received standing ovations, and before the American Red Cross national convention. He testified before a legislative committee investigating indecent literature, “America needs a moral bath and a spiritual awakening,” and declared that California is the heart of the nude photo industry.

A memorable visit was paid to San Quentin Penitentiary, where Dr. Graham told four thousand convicts, “You are all spiritually on death’s row awaiting execution.” Six hundred of them responded to his challenge to live for Jesus Christ behind bars.

And each night he has returned to the Cow Palace to preach a gospel of sin and forgiveness in simple Anglo-Saxon phrases of great force. “So amazing is God’s love,” he told the vast assemblage, “that he erases your sins from his mind as a tape recorder erases its sound track.” Then follows the invitation, and as hundreds of inquirers make the long trek to the front, counselors appear as if by magic to stand alongside. Together they move to the counseling room where the straight and narrow path begins.

A cook from Florida, who jumped bail after being arrested for passing worthless checks, repented at the Cow Palace and then turned himself over to the FBI. He has gone back to face sentence. A woman alcoholic came forward to make her decision, then presented herself at her pastor’s study next day and demanded that he give her something to do. A pastor found tears in the eyes of his bus driver on the trip home and led him to confess his faith in Christ. A 22-year-old man, with scabs on his wrists from a suicide attempt, was heading for a bar and a bridge leap when he followed the crowd into the Cow Palace out of curiosity. He made his commitment in the counseling room and began attending crusade meetings regularly.

Since the meetings began the crusade has been singularly free from criticism. City officials have been friendly. Meanwhile, plans were being shaped for a gigantic visitation evangelism program June 23–26, with 10,000 laymen participating all over the bay area under the auspices of the crusade. If Billy Graham and his team have done nothing more than create a spiritual appetite and a hunger for God among the residents of the West Coast, they have already rendered a memorable service.

S. E. W.

Garden Glow

A spirit of evangelism still glows in New York. Seventeen thousand persons filed into Madison Square Garden on the cool, wet evening of May 15 for a rally marking the first anniversary of the start of Billy Graham’s campaign a year ago. The rally was sponsored by the Protestant Council of the City of New York, which also promoted last summer’s great New York Crusade. The group is planning still another Garden evangelistic meeting on Reformation Day, October 30.

The first anniversary rally had a nostalgic air about it. In a brief recorded message, Graham called on New Yorkers to carry the message of Christ to “thousands of people that are suffering from a thousand different problems.”

“Evangelism is not optional,” he said, “it is an obligation. We should all be engaged in evangelism.”

Principal speaker was the Rev. Joseph Blinco, Methodist evangelist from England and a member of Graham’s team, who asserted that “the good old days” had nothing on the present age.

Evangelist Blinco said we live in times “as dramatic and decisive as ever the Exodus was … (intellectually and philosophically) as dynamic as ever the Renaissance was … and (religiously) as potent as the Reformation.”

Blinco, who attended Cliff College in England and has been an evangelist ever since, wore the clerical white collar and gray suit. When he extended the “second chance” invitation, 128 stepped forward. Following the pattern of a Graham meeting, all were led to an inquiry room for counsel. During his address to the congregation, the evangelist asked how many present had made a decision for Christ the year before during the New York campaign. An estimated 6,000 stood. Last summer’s 61,000 inquirers all received follow-up counsel, according to a report by the Rev. Dan M. Potter, executive director of the Protestant Council, largest interdenominational church group serving Greater New York. Potter said that a visitation program, moreover, had added 1,000 persons to church rolls since the New York Crusade.

How valuable was Graham’s great evangelistic effort in behalf of the nation’s largest city? For lack of an adequate human unit to measure spiritual progress, a number of the evangelist’s opponents have used statistics as a basis for continuing criticism. “Little lasting effect” is a charge used to attack his policies. “Decision totals exaggerated” is another.

Even if the accusations were true, one irrefutable conclusion appears in all of Graham’s crusades: at least some inquirers are genuinely converted, and it is very likely that others are moved to make a decision for Christ even though they do not respond to public invitations. It is with this in mind that Graham asks:

“How many need to be converted before we rejoice?”

This is not to say that he disregards follow-up. Under commission from the Graham team, Dr. Robert O. Ferm, Houghton College dean of students, has been interviewing New York pastors and inquirers for months. He observes that a great majority of those who signed decision cards still affirm their decision.

(High School Evangelism Fellowship of New York reports continuing effects of the Billy Graham Crusade among teenagers. The group has inaugurated a quarterly publication which features in the first issue reports of follow-up work.)

Potter’s report, given as a rally preliminary, listed other evangelism-correlated efforts being carried out by the Protestant Council. He urged New York churches to hold more summer vacation Bible schools and to maintain full summer programs as deterrents to juvenile delinquency. He said the council will intensify its own services to youth during the summer. The group sponsors nine youth centers and helps young people find seasonal jobs.

Other rally preliminaries focused on the 2,000-voice choir led by Jab Williams. At 7:20 p.m. the strains of “How Great Thou Art” filled the Garden, unmistakenly reminiscent of Graham meetings. The choir also sang “Blessed Assurance” and “To God Be the Glory,” the latter title appearing on a banner strung on the edge of a tier overlooking the choir. Choir director Williams, who had assisted Cliff Barrows as music director, made the sign. He is a commercial artist.

Jerome Hines and his Metropolitan Opera company presented a moving Last Supper operatic dramatization. Congregational singing was under the direction of the Rev. Albert Gates. A Salvation Army band presented a pre-rally sacred concert. Miss Ethel Waters also sang. Chairman of the rally was the Rev. Ralph C. Drisko.

Counsellors for the inquirers had been rounded up from crusade mailing lists. So were choir members and ushers.

Love From Hate

Bombings prompted by racial hatred evoked an expression of indignation from the ministerial alliance of Jacksonville, Florida, which issued this statement:

“Any difference, however trivial and needless, is always worsened and aggravated with hate and suspicion, by violence and brutal disregard of the rights of others. The bombing of the James Weldon Johnson Junior High School and the Jacksonville Jewish Center, and the threatened bombing of the Jacksonville Labor Temple, are tragic and deplorable.

“To ignore them or tacitly accept them as the unavoidable accompaniment of disagreements and differences which confront us is to encourage a tendency and a train of thought which can carry us back to the barbaric jungle of human existence where the stronger and more vicious is the ruler.

“It is to be hoped and prayed that the violent, regrettable acts and threats of the past few days represent the isolated thoughtless violence of a few misguided people who will be brought back to saner thoughts and more responsible behavior by seeing what frightening and undesirable results can flow from such actions.”

The bombings may even have had an inadvertent effect for good. Resulting discussions may well bring about more sympathetic attitudes toward the people who were targets of the bombs.

R. K. M.

Exit Addenda

The Navy says it will not allow any more religious medals to accompany Vanguard rockets into space.

A St. Christopher medal was attached to the second stage of a three-stage Vanguard rocket which succeeded in putting the Navy’s first satellite into orbit.

The Navy advised Protestants and Other Americans United last month that steps have been taken “to prevent future similar departures from the universal scientific nature of the Vanguard project.”

Goal: 1,000 Missionaries

The Christian and Missionary Alliance will seek to increase the number of its missionaries serving overseas to 1,000 before the end of 1960. The society now has 822 on 22 mission fields.

The goal was announced by Dr. H. L. Turner at the group’s 61st annual General Council, held in Winnipeg.

South America

A Contact Lost?

The first Auca man to trust American missionaries is reported dead.

The death of the Ecuadorian Indian tribesman, who befriended five missionaries subsequently martyred, was reported by Elisabeth Elliot, wife of one of those slain. He had been dubbed “George.”

Mrs. Elliot is studying the Auca language with two tribeswomen who escaped the jungles last November. She is the author of Through Gates of Splendor and Shadow of the Almighty: The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot, which will be published by Harper and Brothers.

Meanwhile, a Roman Catholic doctor from Montreal had not been heard from for three months after entering the Auca jungle.

England

Cms And Independence

Talk of “missionary imperialism” in West African history is so much nonsense, Canon Max Warren implied in his general secretary’s report to the 159th annual meeting of the Church Missionary Society in London.

Fifty years before Nigeria was under Britain to any appreciable extent, Warren said, CMS was preparing Africans for independence.

“That is both spiritually and politically a fact of some importance,” he said, “that the celebration last autumn of the Centenary of the Niger Mission was, together with much else, the celebration of an act of missionary statesmanship.”

In his presidential address, Sir Kenneth Grubb said it was clear that the services of missions would be requested by the churches of the greater part of Africa “for many years to come.”

Many American mission leaders seem to be still suffering from the shock of China, Grubb added, and unable to envisage much beyond a fairly abrupt termination of their work.

“We of this society do not share these misgivings,” he said. “We have abundant evidence of the genuine and earnest demand made … for our cooperation.”

Africa

The Warfare

Islamic penetration into the cultural and religious life of Nigeria is causing considerable Christian concern.

An Islamic mission plans to establish a new Arabic college while another Nigerian school now offers a course on Islamic thought and culture. Demands are growing for a deeper understanding of Islam because of its impact on West Africa.

Vatican Radio last month said a “veritable race” is taking place in Africa between Christianity and Islam.

However, the Anglican bishop of Lagos said that with Nigeria’s independence in the offing, no useful purpose could be served by Christians and Muslims attacking each other. The Rt. Rev. A. W. Howells told the 13th Synod of the Lagos Diocese that everything possible would be done to arrange exchanges of views on Islam and Christianity.

J. L. J.

Middle East

Israeli Drought

A severe spring drought forced cattle raisers in the Negev area of southern Israel to move flocks because of dried-out pastures. Crops were also damaged.

One report, which called the drought one of the most severe in many years, said that the roadsides out of Jerusalem have been dotted by flocks of sheep and goats turned out to forage on badly-burned grain.

However, an Israel Embassy spokesman in Washington said the lack of rain was not considered a “major” emergency.

The spokesman said damage from droughts has been declining in recent years with the advent of more and improved irrigation systems.

A Step For Prestige?

“Integration” moves by Arab Presbyterians may help American Presbyterian missionaries regain lost prestige in Lebanon and Syria.

National Presbyterian synods in the two Middle Eastern countries are expected to take formal action next month on plans to “merge” with U. S. missions.

The actions would amount to dissolution of the American missions in favor of a national Christian organization, though abandonment is not intended. Missionaries from the United States will continue in present posts as “fraternal workers” under the direction of the national church. Similar moves have been made in India, Thailand, and French Cameroun, in keeping with Presbyterian aims to strengthen national churches by turning over to them the organizations and institutions which hitherto have been entirely controlled by Americans.

In some instances, the “integration” has led to enlargement of established work and appointment of additional personnel from the United States.

Presbyterian U.S.A. observers see increased influence among American missionaries when they no longer represent a foreign agency but a national Christian organization.

In Iran, similar plans have been in the offing for some time. The Iranian Evangelical Church, as far back as 1936, began to assume responsibility for mission projects when the government prohibited foreign-operated grade schools to enroll Iranian children. Mission schools in three cities were taken over by the church and now are expanding. Full indigenization of the Iran Mission has been delayed primarily because of the relative paucity of national leadership and the steady drain on church membership by the emigration of Assyrian and Armenian families.

F. T. W.

[Some missionary boards and missionaries seriously question “integration,” feeling that the inclusion of missionary personnel in the national church and the turning over of mission funds to the national church is a distinct step away from the strengthening of an indigenous church. On many mission fields the national church has been developed and strengthened without either of the above mentioned steps. In some instances nationals have been encouraged by missionaries to demand the integration of the missionaries into their churches, along with subsidation from abroad, only to regret their impetuosity in the light of the effect on the national church.—ED.